Place cells in the hippocampus and grid cells in the entorhinal cortex have different codes for space. Such differences have been documented in a series of experiments that investigated how manipulations of the environment affect the activity of neurons in the medial temporal lobe. The different phenomena observed in neurophysiological data include pattern completion and pattern separation, global and rate remapping of place cells, and realignment of grid cells. In this talk, I’ll describe our effort to model the mechanisms underlying these observed changes in the activity of place and grid cells following environment transformations. I’ll present different aspects of the hippocampal neurophysiology that range from the computation provided by local microcircuits to the global connectivity between the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex. I’ll further discuss how these aspects account the described changes evoked by environment manipulations and the implications on memory functioning in general.

References

Renno-Costa C, Tort ABL (2017) Place and grid cells in a loop: implications for memory function and spatial coding. J Neurosci 37:3490-16.
Renno-Costa C, Lisman JE, Verschure PFMJ (2014) A Signature of Attractor Dynamics in the CA3 Region of the Hippocampus. PLoS Comput Biol 10:e1003641.
Renno-Costa C, Lisman JE, Verschure PFMJ (2010) The Mechanism of Rate Remapping in the Dentate Gyrus. Neuron 68:1051-1058.