Authors
*G. GINOSAR1, J. ALJADEFF2, Y. BURAK3, H. SOMPOLINSKY3, L. LAS1, N. ULANOVSKY1;
1 Weizmann Inst. of Sci., Rehovot, Israel; 2 Dept. of Bioengineering, Imperial Col. London, London, United Kingdom; 3 The Edmond and Lily Safra Ctr. for Brain Sciences, and Racah Inst. of Physics, Jerusalem, Israel

“Grid cells are neurons in medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) that are activated when the animal passes through multiple locations (‘firing-fields’) on the 2D surface that the animal is exploring. These firing-fields are arranged in a hexagonal 2D lattice that spans the entire 2D surface. Although many animals navigate in 3D space, the volumetric 3D firing-pattern of grid cells remains unknown. Here we recorded MEC neurons in freely-flying bats, and found a variety of spatial cells – including 3D border-cells, 3D head-direction cells, and neurons with multiple 3D firing-fields. The multi-field neurons displayed an increased inter-field-spacing along the dorso-ventral axis of MEC – as in rodent grid-cells. Many of the multi-field neurons were 3D grid cells – exhibiting a local order in their field arrangement, with fields separated by a characteristic distance; however, they were not organized in a global lattice. We modeled grid-cells as emerging from pairwise-interactions between fields, which yielded a hexagonal lattice in 2D, but only local order in 3D – thus explaining both 2D and 3D grid-cells within one model.“

For further info, please visit https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/7883/presentation/64763