Hippocampal spatial representations supporting path integration

• Applicant: Dr. Kevin Allen
• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 463197061

Path integration is a simple form of navigation during which an agent integrates self-motion cues, such as linear and angular velocity, to keep track of its position relative to a starting point. Lesion studies indicate that the hippocampus is essential for path integration. Our understanding of the role of the hippocampus in path integration, however, has remained limited because hippocampal activity has never been recorded in freely moving animals engaged in a path integration task. In preliminary work, we have developed a new path integration task suitable for concurrent recording of spatially selective neurons. In this project, we want to firmly establish this new behavioral paradigm for the study of path integration and provide a first characterization of the hippocampal representation during a path integration task in freely moving mice. We hypothesize that hippocampal neurons encode a vectorial representation of the starting location during the task. In addition, we will perform optogenetic experiments to confirm that the hippocampus is essential to performance accuracy on the new path integration task.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants