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Object-vector coding in the medial entorhinal cortex
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Abstract
The hippocampus and the medial entorhinal cortex are part of a brain system that maps self-location during navigation in the proximal environment 1,2. In this system, correlations between neural firing and an animal's position or orientation are so evident that cell types have been given simple descriptive names, such as place cells 3, grid cells 4, border cells 5,6 and head-direction cells 7. While the number of identified functional cell types is growing at a steady rate, insights remain limited by an almost-exclusive reliance on recordings from rodents foraging in empty enclosures that are different from the richly populated, geometrically irregular environments of the natural world. In environments that contain discrete objects, animals are known to store information about distance and direction to those objects and to use this vector information to guide navigation 8-10. Theoretical studies have proposed that such vector operations are supported by neurons that use distance and direction from discrete objects 11,12 or boundaries 13,14 to determine the animal's location, but-although some cells with vector-coding properties may be present in the hippocampus 15 and subiculum 16,17-it remains to be determined whether and how vectorial operations are implemented in the wider neural representation of space. Here we show that a large fraction of medial entorhinal cortex neurons fire specifically when mice are at given distances and directions from spatially confined objects. These 'object-vector cells' are tuned equally to a spectrum of discrete objects, irrespective of their location in the test arena, as well as to a broad range of dimensions and shapes, from point-like objects to extended surfaces. Our findings point to vector coding as a predominant form of position coding in the medial entorhinal cortex.
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“Theoretical models of this phenomenon propose that remapping occurs because these cells are responding to global contextual cues (like arousal or attention) in order to decorrelate related experiences with distinct contextual relevance.27,28”
From Remapping in a recurrent neural network model of navigation and context inference (2023) · cites this paper as [27]
In the citing paper
“Strikingly, the MEC neurons respond at fixed distances and directions from objects, irrespective of location, shape and size of objects, and have been called object-vector cells (Hoydal et al., 2019).”
From The medial prefrontal cortex - hippocampus circuit that integrates information of object, place and time to construct episodic memory in rodents: Behavioral, anatomical and neurochemical properties (2020) · cites this paper as Hoydal et al., 2019
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Self-citation
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Metadata
- Authors
- Høydal, Ø. A., Skytøen, E. R., Andersson, S. O., Moser, M.-B., & Moser, E. I.
- Affiliations
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO)
- Corresponding author
- Høydal, Øyvind Arne
- Moser, Edvard I.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2019-04
- Volume
- 568
- Issue
- 7752
- Pages
- 400-404
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2952062681
- Cited by
- 366
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 31 · 2025: 73 · 2024: 62 · 2023: 62 · 2022: 34 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 35 · 2019: 22
- FWCI
- 18.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Kavli Foundation
- Norges Forskningsråd (223262, #197467)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Developmental Neuroscience › Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity mechanisms
- Keywords
- medial entorhinal cortex, vector coding, spatial navigation, place cells, grid cells, head direction cells, border cells, mouse navigation
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cues, Hippocampus, Male, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Models, Neurological, Neurons, Space Perception, Entorhinal Cortex, Mice, Spatial Learning
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