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The place cell activity in three-dimensional space generated by multiple grid cell inputs

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Abstract

How the brain encodes spatial information is an important topic. Experimental and theoretical progresses achieved in this area mainly focused on the neuronal response in the lower-dimensional space such as a linear track or a horizontal flat arena. How the real three-dimensional (3-D) space is represented in the brain is unknown. Grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex and the place cells in the hippocampus are the principal spatial neurons, and the grid cells provide important inputs to the place cells. In order to simulate the place cell activity in higher dimension, we proposed a rotating-integration model to generate the place field on non-horizontal surfaces for crawling animal in 3-D space. By referring to the gravity signal as an anchor, preferred directions of the grid cell will be rotated with the animal’s body plane during navigating on the surfaces. Then, multiple grid cell patterns with distributed orientations and wavelengths are integrated to form the firing field(s) of a place cell. The results can not only account for the known experimental recordings but also predict a segment planar encoding property of place cell on novel complex surfaces. It suggests that the spatial cognition for crawling animal is achieved by a mosaic of lower-dimensional codes rather than the full volumetric perception. This work can help us understand how the spatial information provided by the external physical world is represented and processed by the neuronal systems.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and insightful advice. We thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai for supporting this research.

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.12172132, 11802095, 11702096, 12072113) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (No.19zr1473100).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China

    Xuying Xu, Yihong Wang & Rubin Wang

  2. College of Computer Science & Technology, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China

    Rubin Wang

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  1. Xuying Xu
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Correspondence to Yihong Wang.

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Xu, X., Wang, Y. & Wang, R. The place cell activity in three-dimensional space generated by multiple grid cell inputs. Nonlinear Dyn 108, 1719–1731 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-022-07247-3

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