Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Francesco Gobbo, Rufus Mitchell-Heggs, Dorothy Tse, Meera Al Omrani, Patrick A. Spooner, Simon R. Schultz, Richard G. M. Morris
Summary: In this study, the researchers used calcium imaging to record neural activity in rats' hippocampus. They found that the firing of cells increased before the rats entered the arena, and this activity was predictive of the changing goal location during navigation.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Eloy Parra-Barrero, Sandhiya Vijayabaskaran, Eddie Seabrook, Laurenz Wiskott, Sen Cheng
Summary: Spatial navigation has been extensively studied by neuroscientists, who have identified key brain areas and discovered many spatially selective cells. However, there is still a lack of understanding regarding how these pieces fit together to drive behavior, which is partly due to insufficient communication between behavioral and neuroscientific researchers. To address this issue, a taxonomy of navigation processes in mammals is proposed as a common framework for interdisciplinary research in the field. This taxonomy has proven useful in identifying potential problems with experimental approaches, designing targeted experiments, interpreting neural activity, and suggesting new avenues of research.
NEUROSCIENCE AND BIOBEHAVIORAL REVIEWS
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Christian Baeuchl, Franka Gloeckner, Christoph Koch, Johannes Petzold, Nicolas W. Schuck, Michael N. Smolka, Shu-Chen Li
Summary: The aging process leads to changes in spatial navigation behavior, with older adults relying more on proximal location cues instead of environmental boundaries. Deficient dopaminergic modulation may contribute to errors during spatial navigation in older adults. Administering levodopa in young and older adults affected brain responses and memory retrieval differently, with older adults showing upregulation in the medial temporal lobe and brainstem. While L-DOPA had no effect on older adults' overall memory performance, it improved spatial memory and increased boundary processing in some individuals.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Gily Ginosar, Ehud D. Karpas, Idan Weitzner, Nachum Ulanovsky
Summary: The perception of 3D space has been extensively studied, but there are conflicting reports on distortions. This study proposes that 3D perception consists of two processes: perception of traveled space and perception of surrounding space. By testing these two aspects on the same subjects, it was found that the perception of traveled space is experience-dependent, while the perception of surrounding space is not affected by experience. This suggests that these two aspects of 3D spatial perception emerge from distinct processes.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Liwei Sun, Sebastian M. Frank, Russell A. Epstein, Peter U. Tse
Summary: Research using fMRI and MVPA found that the right parahippocampal place area and hippocampus encode the spatial significance of landmark objects in indoor spaces, with the neural representation of these objects systematically transforming according to their locations.
Article
Environmental Studies
Jassleen Parmar, Ford Burles, Cara MacInnis, Giuseppe Iaria
Summary: The ability to mentally represent the location of things, known as cognitive maps, is not limited to physical spaces but may also include social spaces. This study explored the relationship between social elements such as social competence, social capital, and social support, and performance on spatial orientation tasks. The findings suggest that individuals with higher social competence, social capital, and social support perceive themselves as better at spatial navigation, but their actual performance contradicts this self-perception.
JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Andrew Sheriff, Guinevere Pandolfi, Vivian S. Nguyen, Leslie M. Kay
Summary: The study reveals widespread interactions among nasal respiration, olfactory bulb, piriform cortex, and hippocampus in awake freely moving rats, supporting the piriform cortex as an integrator of respiratory and theta activity.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Stephen Ramanoel, Marion Durteste, Alice Bizeul, Anthony Ozier-Lafontaine, Marcia Becu, Jose-Alain Sahel, Christophe Habas, Angelo Arleo
Summary: This study examined the activation patterns in the hippocampus and the striatum during visual coding. The results showed that the hippocampus was involved in all types of cue-based navigation, while the striatum was more strongly recruited in the presence of geometric cues. Furthermore, unique neural signatures were associated with each spatial cue.
HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING
(2022)
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Sang Ah Lee
Summary: Our minds are constantly travelling through time and space, organizing memories into contexts and episodes. This paper reviews evidence suggesting that spatial boundary representations play a crucial role in structuring both spatial and temporal memories. The connection between hippocampal spatial mapping and temporal sequencing of episodic memory highlights the relationship between navigational mechanisms and cognitive processes like mental time travel and conceptual mapping, which are shared by humans and nonhuman animals. Understanding hippocampal function across species provides insights into the origins of uniquely human cognitive abilities.
Article
Neurosciences
Nora A. Herweg, Lukas Kunz, Daniel Schonhaut, Armin Brandt, Paul A. Wanda, Ashwini D. Sharan, Michael R. Sperling, Andreas Schulze-Bonhage, Michael J. Kahana
Summary: Distinct lines of research in both humans and animals have found that the hippocampus plays a specific role in spatial and episodic memory function. Concept cells in the hippocampus and surrounding areas suggest that the medial temporal lobe maps physical and semantic spaces using a similar neural architecture. This study examines the emergence of such maps using recordings from the medial temporal lobe of patients navigating a virtual environment with meaningful landmarks, and finds that the field potentials in the medial temporal lobe contain information to decode the subjects' locations and temporal sequences.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Yukitoshi Sakaguchi, Yoshio Sakurai
Summary: The hemispheric differences in brain functions are well-known in humans, with savant syndrome showing exceptional abilities despite brain abnormalities, particularly in cases of left hemispheric dysfunction. Similar left-right differences have been reported in rodent brains, suggesting that unilateral damage may lead to savant-like enhancements. The study found that right hippocampal damage in rats may result in savant-like enhancement in learning and memory abilities.
Article
Neurosciences
Nada El Mahmoudi, Celia Laurent, David Pericat, Isabelle Watabe, Agnes Lapotre, Pierre-Yves Jacob, Alain Tonetto, Brahim Tighilet, Francesca Sargolini
Summary: Unilateral vestibular loss (UVL) leads to a characteristic vestibular syndrome with multiple symptoms. Recovery during vestibular compensation is supported by plasticity mechanisms. The expression of cognitive deficits, especially spatial memory deficits, after UVL is still debated. This study investigated spatial memory deficits and their recovery in a rat model of unilateral vestibular neurectomy (UVN) and analyzed markers of hippocampal plasticity. The results show that UVN affects all domains of spatial memory and is associated with impaired plasticity in the hippocampus.
PROGRESS IN NEUROBIOLOGY
(2023)
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Matthieu Aguilera, Vincent Douchamps, Demian Battaglia, Romain Goutagny
Summary: This article focuses on the functional roles of neuronal oscillations in the hippocampal formation, specifically in information representation and communication. It discusses how gamma oscillations temporally segregate information from different sources within a global reference framework provided by theta oscillations. However, the current model may not capture the complexity of theta-gamma interactions, therefore suggesting the need for new tools and models to better understand this complexity.
FRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Qiliang He, Jon Starnes, Thackery Brown
Summary: This study used multi-voxel pattern analysis combined with human fMRI to investigate the influence of environmental overlap on goal-oriented representations in the hippocampus. The results showed that environmental overlap leads to a decline in goal-oriented decoding in the hippocampus, and this decline is related to the strength of alternative memories. Furthermore, the frontopolar cortex is also involved in representing goal-states.
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Martina Laczo, Lukas Martinkovic, Ondrej Lerch, Jan M. Wiener, Jana Kalinova, Veronika Matuskova, Zuzana Nedelska, Martin Vyhnalek, Jakub Hort, Jan Laczo
Summary: This study assessed spatial navigation performance in AD aMCI and non-AD aMCI patients, and examined the associations between navigation performance and MRI measures of brain atrophy as well as CSF biomarkers related to AD pathology.
FRONTIERS IN AGING NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Emily A. Mankin, Geoffrey W. Diehl, Fraser T. Sparks, Stefan Leutgeb, Jill K. Leutgeb
Article
Neurosciences
Edith Lesburgueres, Fraser T. Sparks, Kally C. O'Reilly, Andre A. Fenton
Article
Neurosciences
Jeffrey D. Zaremba, Anastasia Diamantopoulou, Nathan B. Danielson, Andres D. Grosmark, Patrick W. Kaifosh, John C. Bowler, Zhenrui Liao, Fraser T. Sparks, Joseph A. Gogos, Attila Losonczy
NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
(2017)
Article
Neurosciences
Zoe Nicole Talbot, Fraser Todd Sparks, Dino Dvorak, Bridget Mary Curran, Juan Marcos Alarcon, Andre Antonio Fenton
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Dino Dvorak, Basma Radwan, Fraser T. Sparks, Zoe Nicole Talbot, Andre A. A. Fenton
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Fraser T. Sparks, Simon C. Spanswick, Hugo Lehmann, Robert J. Sutherland
NEUROBIOLOGY OF LEARNING AND MEMORY
(2013)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Rajat Thapa, Fraser T. Sparks, Wahab Hanif, Tine Gulbrandsen, Robert J. Sutherland
NEUROBIOLOGY OF LEARNING AND MEMORY
(2014)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Siegfried Weisenburger, Frank Tejera, Jeffrey Demas, Brandon Chen, Jason Manley, Fraser T. Sparks, Francisca Martinez Traub, Tanya Daigle, Hongkui Zeng, Attila Losonczy, Alipasha Vaziri
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
F. T. Sparks, Z. Liao, W. Li, A. Grosmark, I. Soltesz, A. Losonczy
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
(2020)
Article
Neurosciences
Barna Dudok, Peter M. Klein, Ernie Hwaun, Brian R. Lee, Zizhen Yao, Olivia Fong, John C. Bowler, Satoshi Terada, Fraser T. Sparks, Gergely G. Szabo, Jordan S. Farrell, Jim Berg, Tanya L. Daigle, Bosiljka Tasic, Jordane Dimidschstein, Gord Fishell, Attila Losonczy, Hongkui Zeng, Ivan Soltesz
Summary: Interneurons expressing cholecystokinin (CCK) and parvalbumin (PV) play important roles in regulating hippocampal pyramidal cell output. The activity of CCK BCs in the CA1 of the mouse hippocampus scales inversely with PV and pyramidal cell activity at behaviorally relevant timescales. This inverse coupling is mediated through powerful inhibitory control of CCK BCs by PV cells, demonstrating a novel form of brain-state-specific segregation of inhibition during spontaneous behavior.
Article
Neurosciences
Andres D. Grosmark, Fraser T. Sparks, Matt J. Davis, Attila Losonczy
Summary: Offline reactivation plays a crucial role in stabilizing long-lasting spatial memories and predicting future stability of place cells days in advance. While representations of reward-adjacent locations are generally stable across days, offline reactivation has a more profound effect on stability for reward-distal locations, counterbalancing overall reward bias and predicting comprehensive formation of cognitive maps.
NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Sebi V. Rolotti, Mohsin S. Ahmed, Miklos Szoboszlay, Tristan Geiller, Adrian Negrean, Heike Blockus, Kevin C. Gonzalez, Fraser T. Sparks, Ana Sofia Solis Canales, Anna L. Tuttman, Darcy S. Peterka, Boris V. Zemelman, Franck Polleux, Attila Losonczy
Summary: Hippocampal place cells play a crucial role in spatial navigation and memory, and CA1 pyramidal neurons can rapidly form new place fields within a single trial. However, the rapid recruitment of individual neurons into ensemble representations is likely constrained by local feedback circuits. The interaction between circuit dynamics and rapid feature coding remains unexplored.
Article
Neurosciences
Sebi Rolotti, Heike Blockus, Fraser T. Sparks, James B. Priestley, Attila Losonczy
Summary: The hippocampus plays a critical role in memory consolidation, particularly during sharp-wave ripple (SWR) events. This study investigated the relationship between network state and information processing in dendrites, the primary sites of synaptic input integration and plasticity. The researchers found that immobility led to increased dendritic activity, which was concentrated during SWR events. Concurrent dendritic and somatic activity during SWRs predicted increased coupling during subsequent exploration of a novel environment. Somatic-dendritic coupling and SWR recruitment also varied based on cells' tuning distance to reward location during a goal-learning task.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Jordan S. Farrell, Matthew Lovett-Barron, Peter M. Klein, Fraser T. Sparks, Tilo Gschwind, Anna L. Ortiz, Biafra Ahanonu, Susanna Bradbury, Satoshi Terada, Mikko Oijala, Ernie Hwaun, Barna Dudok, Gergely Szabo, Mark J. Schnitzer, Karl Deisseroth, Attila Losoncz, Ivan Soltesz
Summary: Research has identified neurons in the supramammillary nucleus (SuM) that are highly correlated with future locomotor speed and reliably drive locomotion. Specifically, Tac1-expressing neurons in the SuM were found to control the activity of speed-modulated hippocampal neurons. These findings suggest that the SuM not only regulates basic locomotor activity but also selectively shapes hippocampal neural activity in a way that may support spatial navigation.
Review
Clinical Neurology
Carlos A. Lafourcade, Fraser T. Sparks, Angelique Bordey, Ursula Wyneken, Michael H. Mohammadi
Summary: The hippocampal formation is crucial in the development of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), a disease characterized by recurrent, unprovoked epileptic discharges. The hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) acts as a filter to prevent excessive excitation and is considered critical in the progression of epileptogenesis. Endogenous cannabinoids (endocannabinoids) play a central role in regulating neuronal activity in the DG circuit. This review summarizes recent findings on the role of the DG in controlling hyperexcitability and discusses the potential therapeutic interventions using cannabinoids.