A Spin Glass Model of Path Integration in Rat Medial Entorhinal Cortex

By Mark C. Fuhs, David S. Touretzky. Journal of Neuroscience, 2006

652 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Electrophysiological recording studies in the dorsocaudal region of medial entorhinal cortex (dMEC) of the rat reveal cells whose spatial firing fields show a remarkably regular hexagonal grid pattern (Fyhn et al., 2004; Hafting et al., 2005). We describe a symmetric, locally connected neural network, or spin glass model, that spontaneously produces a hexagonal grid of activity bumps on a two-dimensional sheet of units. The spatial firing fields of the simulated cells closely resemble those of dMEC cells. A collection of grids with different scales and/or orientations forms a basis set for encoding position. Simulations show that the animal’s location can easily be determined from the population activity pattern. Introducing an asymmetry in the model allows the activity bumps to be shifted in any direction, at a rate proportional to velocity, to achieve path integration. Furthermore, information about the structure of the environment can be superimposed on the spatial position signal by modulation of the bump activity levels without significantly interfering with the hexagonal periodicity of firing fields. Our results support the conjecture of Hafting et al. (2005) that an attractor network in dMEC may be the source of path integration information afferent to hippocampus.

Subfields: Cell Biology, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f4649234d52d1848495dcebd9f0cc9042e636bff

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Citations in the corpus

Conflicts between Local and Global Spatial Frameworks Dissociate Neural Representations of the Lateral and Medial Entorhinal Cortex (2013, background): “The distinction between the MEC and LEC may be best described as the MEC supporting path integration mechanisms to create a self-motion-based, internal spatial framework (O’Keefe and Burgess, 2005; Fuhs and Touretzky, 2006; McNaughton et al., 2006; Hasselmo, 2012), whereas the LEC processes informat”
Layer-Specific Organization of Local Excitatory and Inhibitory Synaptic Connectivity in the Rat Presubiculum (2017, background): “Proposed models for grid cell generation include various continuous attractor network models and oscillatory interference models (Zhang 1996; Fuhs and Touretzky 2006; McNaughton et al. 2006; Burak and Fiete 2009; Bush and Burgess 2014; Solanka et al. 2015).”
The head direction signal: origins and sensory-motor integration. (2007, background): “The recent excitement of finding grid cells in the entorhinal cortex demonstrates this area’s potential importance for path integration (McNaughton et al. 2006), and recent models have shown how these cells may play a role in path integration (Fuhs & Touretzky 2006; compare Burak & Fiete 2006).”
A model of grid cell development through spatial exploration and spike time-dependent plasticity. (2014, neutral): “I I -45 -12 30 0 80 0 80 200 0 neuron 200 80 0 80 0 0 200 0 0 80 80 0 neuron neuron 100 0 200 0 neuron neuron 0 10 20 200 0”
Attractor and integrator networks in the brain (2021, methodology): “[21] Mark C Fuhs and David S Touretzky.”
Pattern separation, completion, and categorisation in the hippocampus and neocortex. (2016, neutral): “…7 Stringer, Rolls, et al., 2002; Stringer, Trappenberg, et al., 2002; Walters, Stringer, & Rolls, 2013), including in the entorhinal cortex grid cell system (Burak & Fiete, 2009; Burgess, Barry, & O’Keefe, 2007; Fuhs & Touretzky, 2006; Giocomo et al., 2011; Kropff & Treves, 2008; Zilli, 2012).”
Spatial Cognition and the Brain (2008, background): “This could occur by each cell passing activity on to the appropriate neighbor (McNaughton et al. 2006; Sargolini et al. 2006; Fuhs & Touretzky 2006) or by each cell integrating movement information individually (Burgess et al. 2007).”
An oscillatory interference model of grid cell firing (2007, methodology): “Our model provides an alternative to models of grid cells in which path integration occurs by shifting a bump of activity around within a continuous attractor representation supported by recurrent connections (Fuhs and Touretzky, 2006; McNaughton et al., 2006).”