Abstract
In primates as well as rodents, the posterior parietal cortex maps spatial relationships having both egocentric and external frames of reference. In this chapter, the form in which rat posterior parietal cortex neuronal activity maps position within trajectories through the environment is considered in detail and compared to the forms of spatial mapping observed for neurons of the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Evidence is presented to indicate that posterior parietal neurons simultaneously map positions both within and across segments of paths through an environment. It is suggested that the specific nature of posterior parietal cortex mapping of space serves, in part, to transition knowledge of position in the environment, given by hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, into efficient path-running behavior via projections to primary and secondary sensory and motor cortices. Posterior parietal cortex activity is also hypothesized to play a role both in driving trajectory dependence of hippocampal place cells and in anchoring spatially specific hippocampal and entorhinal cortical activity to the boundaries of the observable environment.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Addis DR, Knapp K, Roberts RP, Schacter DL (2012) Routes to the past: neural substrates of direct and generative autobiographical memory retrieval. Neuroimage 59(3):2908–2922
Averbeck BB, Chafee MV, Crowe DA, Georgopoulos AP (2003) Neural activity in prefrontal cortex during copying geometrical shapes. I. Single cells encode shape, sequence, and metric parameters. Exp Brain Res 150(2):127–141
Avillac M, Denève S, Olivier E, Pouget A, Duhamel JR (2005) Reference frames for representing visual and tactile locations in parietal cortex. Nat Neurosci 8(7):941–949
Bhattacharyya R, Musallam S, Andersen RA (2009) Parietal reach region encodes reach depth using retinal disparity and vergence angle signals. J Neurophysiol 102(2):805–816
Bremmer F, Klam F, Duhamel JR, Ben Hamed S, Graf W (2002) Visual-vestibular interactive responses in the macaque ventral intraparietal area (VIP). Eur J Neurosci 16(8):1569–1586
Brotchie PR, Andersen RA, Snyder LH, Goodman SJ (1995) Head position signals used by parietal neurons to encode locations of visual stimuli. Nature 375:232–235
Bullmore E, Sporns O (2012) The economy of brain network organization. Nat Rev Neurosci 13(5):336–349
Burke SN, Chawla MK, Penner MR, Crowell BE, Worley PF, Barnes CA, McNaughton BL (2005) Differential encoding of behavior and spatial context in deep and superficial layers of the neocortex. Neuron 45(5):667–674
Burwell RD, Amaral DG (1998a) Perirhinal and postrhinal cortices of the rat: interconnectivity and connections with the entorhinal cortex. J Comp Neurol 391(3):293–321
Burwell RD, Amaral DG (1998b) Cortical afferents of the perirhinal, postrhinal, and entorhinal cortices of the rat. J Comp Neurol 398(2):179–205
Chafee MV, Crowe DA, Averbeck BB, Georgopoulos AP (2005) Neural correlates of spatial judgement during object construction in parietal cortex. Cereb Cortex 15(9):1393–1413
Chen LL, Lin LH, Green EJ, Barnes CA, McNaughton BL (1994a) Head-direction cells in the rat posterior cortex. I. Anatomical distribution and behavioral modulation. Exp Brain Res 101(1):8–23
Chen LL, Lin LH, Barnes CA, McNaughton BL (1994b) Head-direction cells in the rat posterior cortex. II. Contributions of visual and ideothetic information to the directional firing. Exp Brain Res 101(1):24–34
Cho J, Sharp PE (2001) Head direction, place, and movement correlates for cells in the rat retrosplenial cortex. Behav Neurosci 115(1):3–25
Cohen YE, Andersen RA (2002) A common reference frame for movement plans in the posterior parietal cortex. Nat Rev Neurosci 3(7):553–562
Colby CL, Duhamel JR (1996) Spatial representations for action in parietal cortex. Cogn Brain Res 5:105–115
Colby CL, Goldberg ME (1999) Space and attention in parietal cortex. Annu Rev Neurosci 22:319–349
Cooper BG, Miya DY, Mizumori SJ (1998) Superior colliculus and active navigation: role of visual and non-visual cues in controlling cellular representations of space. Hippocampus 8(4):340–372
Crowe DA, Averbeck BB, Chafee MV, Georgopoulos AP (2005) Dynamics of parietal neural activity during spatial cognitive processing. Neuron 47(6):885–891
Crowe DA, Averbeck BB, Chafee MV (2008) Neural ensemble decoding reveals a correlate of viewer- to object-centered spatial transformation in monkey parietal cortex. J Neurosci 28(20):5218–5228
Crowe DA, Averbeck BB, Chafee MV (2010) Rapid sequences of population activity patterns dynamically encode task-critical spatial information in parietal cortex. J Neurosci 30(35):11640–11653
Derdikman D, Moser EI (2010) A manifold of spatial maps in the brain. Trends Cogn Sci 14(12):561–569
Derdikman D, Moser EI (2014) Spatial maps in the entorhinal cortex and adjacent structures. In: Derdikman D, Knierim JJ (eds) Space, time and memory in the hippocampal formation. Springer, Heidelberg
Derdikman D, Whitlock JR, Tsao A, Fyhn M, Hafting T, Moser MB, Moser EI (2009) Fragmentation of grid cell maps in a multicompartment environment. Nat Neurosci 12(10):1325–1332
DiMattia BD, Kesner RP (1988) Spatial cognitive maps: differential role of parietal cortex and hippocampal formation. Behav Neurosci 102(4):471–480
Driver J, Baylis GC, Goodrich SJ, Rafal RD (1994) Axis-based neglect of visual shapes. Neuropsychologia 32(11):1353–1365
Erlich JC, Bialek M, Brody CD (2011) A cortical substrate for memory-guided orienting in the rat. Neuron 72(2):330–343
Ferbinteanu J, Shapiro ML (2003) Prospective and retrospective memory coding in the hippocampus. Neuron 40(6):1227–1239
Foreman N, Save E, Thinus-Blanc C, Buhot MC (1992) Visually guided locomotion, distractibility, and the missing-stimulus effect in hooded rats with unilateral or bilateral lesions of parietal cortex. Behav Neurosci 106(3):529–538
Foster TC, Castro CA, McNaughton BL (1989) Spatial selectivity of rat hippocampal neurons: dependence on preparedness for movement. Science 244(4912):1580–1582
Frank LM, Brown EN, Wilson M (2000) Trajectory encoding in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex. Neuron 27(1):169–178
Freedman DJ, Assad JA (2006) Experience-dependent representation of visual categories in parietal cortex. Nature 443(7107):85–88
Furtak SC, Ahmed OJ, Burwell RD (2012) Single neuron activity and theta modulation in postrhinal cortex during visual object discrimination. Neuron 76(5):976–988
Fyhn M, Molden S, Witter MP, Moser EI, Moser MB (2004) Spatial representation in the entorhinal cortex. Science 305(5688):1258–1264
Goodrich-Hunsaker NJ, Hunsaker MR, Kesner RP (2005) Dissociating the role of the parietal cortex and dorsal hippocampus for spatial information processing. Behav Neurosci 119(5):1307–1315
Gu X, Staines WA, Fortier PA (1999) Quantitative analysis of neurons projecting to primary motor cortex zones controlling limb movements in the rat. Brain Res 835:175–187
Hafting T, Fyhn M, Molden S, Moser MB, Moser EI (2005) Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex. Nature 436(7052):801–806
Hargreaves EL, Rao G, Lee I, Knierim JJ (2005) Major dissociation between medial and lateral entorhinal input to dorsal hippocampus. Science 308(5729):1792–1794
Harvey CD, Collman F, Dombeck DA, Tank DW (2009) Intracellular dynamics of hippocampal place cells during virtual navigation. Nature 461(7266):941–946
Harvey CD, Coen P, Tank DW (2012) Choice-specific sequences in parietal cortex during a virtual-navigation decision task. Nature 484(7392):62–68
Hassabis D, Kumaran D, Maguire EA (2007) Using imagination to understand the neural basis of episodic memory. J Neurosci 27(52):14365–14374
Hayashi MJ, Kanai R, Tanabe HC, Yoshida Y, Carlson S, Walsh V, Sadato N (2013) Interaction of numerosity and time in prefrontal and parietal cortex. J Neurosci 33(3):883–893
Hoh TE, Kolb B, Eppel A, Vanderwolf CH, Cain DP (2003) Role of the neocortex in the water maze task in the rat: a detailed behavioral and Golgi-Cox analysis. Behav Brain Res 138(1):81–94
Karnath H, Schenkel P, Fischer B (1991) Decrease of contralateral neglect by neck muscle vibration and spatial orientation of the trunk midline. Brain 116:383–396
Kelemen E, Fenton AA (2010) Dynamic grouping of hippocampal neural activity during cognitive control of two spatial frames. PLoS Biol 2010:8(6)
Kesner RP (2009) The posterior parietal cortex and long-term memory representation of spatial information. Neurobiol Learn Mem 91(2):197–206
Knierim JJ, Hamilton DA (2011) Framing spatial cognition: neural representations of proximal and distal frames of reference and their roles in navigation. Physiol Rev 91(4):1245–1279
Knierim JJ, Kudrimoti HS, McNaughton BL (1998) Interactions between idiothetic cues and external landmarks in the control of place cells and head direction cells. J Neurophysiol 80(1):425–446
Kolb B, Walkey J (1987) Behavioural and anatomical studies of the posterior parietal cortex in the rat. Behav Brain Res 23(2):127–145
Leutgeb S, Leutgeb JK (2014) Remapping to discriminate contexts with hippocampal population codes. In: Derdikman D, Knierim JJ (eds) Space, time and memory in the hippocampal formation. Springer, Heidelberg
Leutgeb S, Leutgeb JK, Barnes CA, Moser EI, McNaughton BL, Moser MB (2005) Independent codes for spatial and episodic memory in hippocampal neuronal ensembles. Science 309(5734):619–623
Long JM, Kesner RP (1998) Effects of hippocampal and parietal cortex lesions on memory for egocentric distance and spatial location information in rats. Behav Neurosci 112(3):480–495
Markus EJ, Qin YL, Leonard B, Skaggs WE, McNaughton BL, Barnes CA (1995) Interactions between location and task affect the spatial and directional firing of hippocampal neurons. J Neurosci 15(11):7079–7094
McNaughton BL, Mizumori SJ, Barnes CA, Leonard BJ, Marquis M, Green EJ (1994) Cortical representation of motion during unrestrained spatial navigation in the rat. Cereb Cortex 4(1):27–39
McNaughton BL, Battaglia FP, Jensen O, Moser EI, Moser MB (2006) Path integration and the neural basis of the ‘cognitive map’. Nat Rev Neurosci 7(8):663–678
Mizumori SJ, Williams JD (1993) Directionally selective mnemonic properties of neurons in the lateral dorsal nucleus of the thalamus of rats. J Neurosci 13(9):4015–4028
Morris RG, Schenk F, Tweedie F, Jarrard LE (1990) Ibotenate lesions of hippocampus and/or subiculum: dissociating components of allocentric spatial learning. Eur J Neurosci 2(12):1016–1028
Mountcastle VB (1995) The parietal system and some higher brain functions. Cereb Cortex 5:377–390
Mountcastle VB, Lynch JC, Georgopoulos A, Sakata H, Acuna C (1975) Posterior parietal association cortex of the monkey: command functions for operations within extrapersonal space. J Neurophysiol 38(4):871–908
Muller RU, Kubie JL (1987) The effects of changes in the environment on the spatial firing of hippocampal complex-spike cells. J Neurosci 7(7):1951–1968
Murata A, Gallese V, Luppino G, Kaseda M, Sakata H (2000) Selectivity for the shape, size, and orientation of objects for grasping in neurons of monkey parietal area AIP. J Neurophysiol 83:2580–2601
Nitz DA (2006) Tracking route progression in the posterior parietal cortex. Neuron 49(5):747–756
Nitz D (2009) Parietal cortex, navigation, and the construction of arbitrary reference frames for spatial information. Neurobiol Learn Mem 91(2):179–185
Nitz DA (2011) Path shape impacts the extent of CA1 pattern recurrence both within and across environments. J Neurophysiol 105(4):1815–1824
Nitz DA (2012) Spaces within spaces: rat parietal cortex neurons register position across three reference frames. Nat Neurosci 15(10):1365–1367
O’Keefe J, Dostrovsky J (1971) The hippocampus as a spatial map. Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat. Brain Res 34(1):171–175
Pinto-Hamuy T, Montero VM, Torrealba F (2004) Neurotoxic lesion of anteromedial/posterior parietal cortex disrupts spatial maze memory in blind rats. Behav Brain Res 153(2):465–470
Platt ML, Glimcher PW (1999) Neural correlates of decision variables in parietal cortex. Nature 400:233–238
Pouget A, Driver J (2000) Relating unilateral neglect to the neural coding of space. Curr Opin Neurobiol 10:242–249
Pouget A, Sejnowski TJ (1997) A new view of hemineglect based on the response properties of parietal neurons. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B 352:1449–1459
Qin YL, McNaughton BL, Skaggs WE, Barnes CA (1997) Memory reprocessing in corticocortical and hippocampocortical neuronal ensembles. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 352(1360):1525–1533
Rafal RD (1994) Neglect. Curr Opin Neurobiol 4(2):231–236
Ravassard P, Kees A, Willers B, Ho D, Aharoni D, Cushman J, Aghajan ZM, Mehta MR (2013) Multisensory control of hippocampal spatiotemporal selectivity. Science 340(6138):1342–1346
Reep RL, Corwin JV (2009) Posterior parietal cortex as part of a neural network for directed attention in rats. Neurobiol Learn Mem 91(2):104–113
Reep RL, Chandler HC, King V, Corwin JV (1994) Rat posterior parietal cortex: topography of corticocortical and thalamic connections. Exp Brain Res 100(1):67–84
Richter W, Ugurbil K, Georgopoulos A, Kim SG (1997) Time-resolved fMRI of mental rotation. Neuroreport 8(17):3697–3702
Robinson S, Bucci DJ (2012) Damage to the posterior parietal cortex impairs two forms of relational learning. Front Integr Neurosci 6:45
Rogers JL, Kesner RP (2007) Hippocampal-parietal cortex interactions: evidence from a disconnection study in the rat. Behav Brain Res 179(1):19–27
Sargolini F, Fyhn M, Hafting T, McNaughton BL, Witter MP, Moser MB, Moser EI (2006) Conjunctive representation of position, direction, and velocity in entorhinal cortex. Science 312(5774):758–762
Save E, Poucet B (2000) Involvement of the hippocampus and associative parietal cortex in the use of proximal and distal landmarks for navigation. Behav Brain Res 109(2):195–206
Save E, Poucet B (2009) Role of the parietal cortex in long-term representation of spatial information in the rat. Neurobiol Learn Mem 91(2):172–178
Save E, Poucet B, Foreman N, Buhot MC (1992) Object exploration and reactions to spatial and nonspatial changes in hooded rats following damage to parietal cortex or hippocampal formation. Behav Neurosci 106(3):447–456
Save E, Paz-Villagran V, Alexinsky T, Poucet B (2005) Functional interaction between the associative parietal cortex and hippocampal place cell firing in the rat. Eur J Neurosci 21(2):522–530
Shadlen MN, Newsome WT (2001) Neural basis of a perceptual decision in the parietal cortex (area LIP) of the rhesus monkey. J Neurophysiol 86(4):1916–1936
Singer AC, Karlsson MP, Nathe AR, Carr MF, Frank LM (2010) Experience-dependent development of coordinated hippocampal spatial activity representing the similarity of related locations. J Neurosci 30(35):11586–11604
Snyder LH, Grieve KL, Brotchie P, Andersen RA (1998) Separate body- and world-referenced representations of visual space in parietal cortex. Nature 394(6696):887–891
Spiers HJ, Maguire EA (2007) A navigational guidance system in the human brain. Hippocampus 17(8):618–626
Sul JH, Jo S, Lee D, Jung MW (2011) Role of rodent secondary motor cortex in value-based action selection. Nat Neurosci 14(9):1202–1208
Taube JS, Muller RU, Ranck JB Jr (1990) Head-direction cells recorded from the postsubiculum in freely moving rats. II. Effects of environmental manipulations. J Neurosci 10(2):436–447
Terrazas A, Krause M, Lipa P, Gothard KM, Barnes CA, McNaughton BL (2005) Self-motion and the hippocampal spatial metric. J Neurosci 25(35):8085–8096
Tudusciuc O, Nieder A (2009) Contributions of primate prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices to length and numerosity representation. J Neurophysiol 101(6):2984–2994
Vallar G (1998) Spatial hemineglect in humans. Trends Cogn Sci 2(3):87–97
Whitlock JR, Pfuhl G, Dagslott N, Moser MB, Moser EI (2012) Functional split between parietal and entorhinal cortices in the rat. Neuron 73(4):789–802
Wood ER, Dudchenko PA, Robitsek RJ, Eichenbaum H (2000) Hippocampal neurons encode information about different types of memory episodes occurring in the same location. Neuron 27(3):623–633
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag Wien
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nitz, D.A. (2014). The Posterior Parietal Cortex: Interface Between Maps of External Spaces and the Generation of Action Sequences. In: Derdikman, D., Knierim, J. (eds) Space,Time and Memory in the Hippocampal Formation. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1292-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-1292-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-7091-1291-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-7091-1292-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)