Coordinating with the "Inner GPS".
Hippocampus June 1, 2015 DOI: 10.1002/hipo.22451 (opens in new tab) via PubMed
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractThe 2014 Nobel Prize recognized discoveries of the brain's internal positioning system centered on the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. This essay discusses the importance of these findings for systems neuroscience, arguing that identifying components such as place, direction, distance, and borders offers an opportunity to understand how they integrate into a synthetic positioning sense. The author contends this system represents the most experimentally accessible cognitive representation. A preliminary observation with the psychosis-inducing drug phencyclidine (PCP) is noted: PCP does not disrupt where individual place cells fire but dramatically discoordinates how they discharge together in time, highlighting the challenge of understanding coordination among positioning components.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Phencyclidine (PCP) |
| Keywords | Grid cell Hippocampus Neural coordination Place cell Spatial cognition |
| Key finding | Argues that identifying positioning components like place, direction, distance, and borders allows the field to study how these components integrate into a synthetic positioning sense, and that a preliminary observation with PCP shows it discoordinates the timing of place cell discharges without disturbing where they fire. |
Abstract
The 2014 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded for the discoveries that have elucidated the components of the internal positioning system that is centered on the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Here I provide a less than objective discussion of the importance of these accomplishments to systems neuroscience. By identifying positioning components like place, direction, distance, borders and the like, the field is given the opportunity to have a shot at piecing together how these components are integrated into the synthetic positioning sense. We are also given what is in my view, the most experimentally accessible and therefore potentially understandable, cognitive representation. Lest we feel too confident in the completeness of our understanding, and to inspire redoubled curiosity, I briefly describe a preliminary observation from our work with the psychosis-inducing drug phencyclidine (PCP). While PCP does not disturb where individual place cells fire, it dramatically discoordinates how these cells discharge together in time. Trying to understand how the positioning component cells are coordinated to provide useful knowledge is an exciting and tenable problem to be working on.