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. Theoretical studies have proposed that such vector operations are supported by neurons that use distance and direction from discrete objects or boundaries to determine the animal’s location, but—although some cells with vector-coding properties may be present in the hippocampus  and subiculum1 —it remains to be determined whether and how vectorial operations are implemented in the wider neural representation of space.

Høydal et al. 2019 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. Their findings point to vector coding as a predominant form of position coding in the medial entorhinal cortex.

For further info, please read the paper Høydal et al. 2019.

Øyvind Arne Høydal, Emilie Ranheim Skytøen, Sebastian Ola Andersson, May-Britt Moser & Edvard I Moser . Object-vector coding in the medial entorhinal cortex. Nature, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1077-7.