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Science 4 July 2008:
Vol. 321. no. 5885, pp. 140 - 143
DOI: 10.1126/science.1157086
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Reports

Finite Scale of Spatial Representation in the Hippocampus

Kirsten Brun Kjelstrup,1 Trygve Solstad,1 Vegard Heimly Brun,1 Torkel Hafting,1 Stefan Leutgeb,1 Menno P. Witter,1,2 Edvard I. Moser,1* May-Britt Moser1

To determine how spatial scale is represented in the pyramidal cell population of the hippocampus, we recorded neural activity at multiple longitudinal levels of this brain area while rats ran back and forth on an 18-meter-long linear track. CA3 cells had well-defined place fields at all levels. The scale of representation increased almost linearly from <1 meter at the dorsal pole to ~10 meters at the ventral pole. The results suggest that the place-cell map includes the entire hippocampus and that environments are represented in the hippocampus at a topographically graded but finite continuum of scales.

1 Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7489 Trondheim, Norway.
2 Research Institute Neurosciences, Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences, VU University Medical Center, 1007 MB Amsterdam, Netherlands.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: edvard.moser{at}ntnu.no

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