Interaction of egocentric and world-centered reference frames in the rat posterior parietal cortex

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Date
2014
Authors
Wilber, Aaron A.
Clark, Benjamin J.
Forster, Tyler C.
Tatsuno, Masami
McNaughton, Bruce L.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Society for Neuroscience
Abstract
Navigation requires coordination of egocentric and allocentric spatial reference frames and may involve vectorial computations relative to landmarks. Creation of are presentation of target heading relative to landmarks could be accomplished from neurons that encode the conjunction of egocentric landmark bearings with allocentric head direction. Landmark vector representations could then be created by combining these cells with distance encoding cells. Landmark vector cells have been identified in rodent hippocampus. Given remembered vectors at go allocations, it would be possible to use such cells to compute trajectories to hidden goals. To look for the first stage in this process, we assessed parietal cortical neuralactivity as a function of egocentric cue light location and allocentric head direction in rats running a random sequence to light locations around a circular platform. We identified cells that exhibit the predicted egocentric-by allocentric conjunctive characteristics and anticipate orienting toward the goal.
Description
Sherpa Romeo yellow journal. Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) applies.
Keywords
Spatial orientation , Landmark navigation , Posterior parietal cortex , Head direction , Spatial navigation , Allocentric
Citation
Wilber, A. A., Clark, B. J., Forster T. C., Tatsuno, M., & McNaughton, B. L. (2014). Interaction of egocentric and world-centered reference frames in the rat posterior parietal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(16), 5431-5446. DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0511-14.2014