Spatial Navigation Flashcards
What are the two fundamental problems of navigation?
- Where am I?
- How do I get from here (A) to there (B)?
What are some navigational strategies?
Spatial cognitive maps and visual snapshots
Describe the trisynaptic circuit pathway.
Entorhinal cortex -> Dentate gyrus -> CA3 ( through mossy fibers ) -> CA1
What are the three major cells groups in the tri-synaptic circuit?
Granule cells, CA1, and CA3 pyramidal cells
Describe the firing rate of place cells, and where they are in the brain.
Place cells are located in the hippocampus, and have a discrete firing field.
What evidence demonstrates that the hippocampus plays a role in spatial memory?
Place cells in the hippocampus remain (relatively) stable over time. Often, these external changes cause a reorganization of the cell ensembles representing the position of the animal, referred to as remapping.
What does place cell activity depend on?
Place cell activity depends on environmental cues and undergo remapping
What is a cell ensemble?
Place cells with overlapping firing fields tend to fire together, neurons with this temporally and spatially correlated activity act as a functional unit
What does the entorhinal cortex encode?
The entorhinal cortex encodes head direction and has grid cells which input to place cells
Where are both head direction and grid cells located?
Entorhinal cortex ( Medial Entorhinal Cortex )
What is the pathway between head direction cells and place cells?
Head direction cells ( Medial Entorhinal Cortex ) -> Place cells ( Hippocampus CA1 cell layer
Describe the firing rate of grid cells.
Grid cells fire at regular intervals in an arena
The parahippocampal place area is involved in what type of recognition?
Scene recognition, but mostly involved in scene recognition of new places or new perspectives of familiar places, but less active for old views.
