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Conjunctive Representation of Position, Direction, and Velocity in Entorhinal Cortex
Francesca Sargolini,1Marianne Fyhn,1Torkel Hafting,1Bruce L. McNaughton,1,2Menno P. Witter,1,3May-Britt Moser,1Edvard I. Moser1*
Grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) are part ofan environment-independent spatial coordinate system. To determinehow information about location, direction, and distance is integratedin the grid-cell network, we recorded from each principal celllayer of MEC in rats that explored two-dimensional environments.Whereas layer II was predominated by grid cells, grid cellscolocalized with head-direction cells and conjunctive grid xhead-direction cells in the deeper layers. All cell types weremodulated by running speed. The conjunction of positional, directional,and translational information in a single MEC cell type mayenable grid coordinates to be updated during self-motion–basednavigation.
1 Centre for the Biology of Memory, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7489 Trondheim, Norway. 2 Arizona Research Laboratories Division of Neural Systems, Memory, and Aging, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA. 3 Research Institute Neurosciences, Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences, Vrije Universiteit University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: edvard.moser{at}ntnu.no
