Many hippocampal place cells show variable responses during spatial navigation, suggesting that navigation is encoded across a population of neurons. Calcium imaging of hundreds of CA1 and dentate gyrus neurons in mice freely exploring their environment showed that spatial position could be encoded by ensembles of neurons that included, surprisingly, non-place cells. This suggests that spatial information is highly distributed across hippocampal neurons and that monitoring population activity provides an accurate picture of spatial encoding.
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Stefanini, F. et al. A distributed neural code in the dentate gyrus and in CA1. Neuron https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.05.022 (2020)
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Lewis, S. Navigating by neural orchestra. Nat Rev Neurosci 21, 400 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0338-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-0338-7