Representation of Non-Spatial and Spatial Information in the Lateral Entorhinal Cortex

By Sachin S. Deshmukh, James J. Knierim. 2011

444 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Some theories of memory propose that the hippocampus integrates the individual items and events of experience within a contextual or spatial framework. The hippocampus receives cortical input from two major pathways: the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC). During exploration in an open field, the firing fields of MEC grid cells form a periodically repeating, triangular array. In contrast, LEC neurons show little spatial selectivity, and it has been proposed that the LEC may provide non-spatial input to the hippocampus. Here, we recorded MEC and LEC neurons while rats explored an open field that contained discrete objects. LEC cells fired selectively at locations relative to the objects, whereas MEC cells were weakly influenced by the objects. These results provide the first direct demonstration of a double dissociation between LEC and MEC inputs to the hippocampus under conditions of exploration typically used to study hippocampal place cells.

Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Re-evaluating circuit mechanisms underlying pattern separation (2019, neutral): “In contrast, lateral entorhinal cortex may also encode non-spatial features such as object identity (Deshmukh and Knierim, 2011) and time (Tsao et al.”
Conflicts between Local and Global Spatial Frameworks Dissociate Neural Representations of the Lateral and Medial Entorhinal Cortex (2013, background): “, 2011), but the tuning becomes strongly enhanced in the presence of discrete objects, showing spatial firing fields and “memory” for locations previously occupied by objects (Deshmukh and Knierim, 2011).”
Tracking the Flow of Hippocampal Computation: Pattern Separation, Pattern Completion, and Attractor Dynamics (2015, background): “…LEC cells fire in the presence of discrete objects in an environment, and under these conditions a small minority show spatial tuning profiles that resemble the robust place fields of the hippocampus, even when the firing location is away from the objects (Deshmukh & Knierim, 2011).”
Report Traces of Experience in the Lateral Entorhinal Cortex (2013, unknown): “LEC neurons show little spatial modulation when rats run in empty open-field environments [6, 7] but fire in the vicinity of discrete objects [7], suggesting that they provide information about the specific content of the spatial environment.”