Neurobiological work on mammalian navigation has been greatly informed by studies of single neurons (individually or in ensembles) in freely exploring/navigating rodents. In seeking to understand the fundamental mechanisms underlying navigation, these studies have uncovered a panoply of “canonical neurons” (e.g., place, head-direction, and grid cells) that exhibit activity patterns that are recognizable as components of a spatial code. However, it is increasingly clear that much or even most of the brain is involved in navigation, and that many navigationally involved neurons do not have canonical space-coding properties. Understanding these other areas, their functions, and the nature of the less-obvious coding schemes is challenging but important, and so this chapter asks: How do we get traction on these more complex, integrated and distributed signals? What new technology or experimental paradigms could help? What are the next steps for neurobiological navigation research? Discussion concludes with an examination of whether the mammalian navigation network has developed, over evolutionary time, to support other types of cognition.

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The Brain’s Extended Navigation Network

  • E. Zita Patai,
  • Thackery I. Brown,
  • Stéphane Ciocchi,
  • Michael Goard,
  • Shantanu P. Jadhav,
  • Sepiedeh Keshavarzi,
  • Julija Krupic,
  • Jean Laurens,
  • Koen Vervaeke,
  • Kate Jeffery

摘要

Neurobiological work on mammalian navigation has been greatly informed by studies of single neurons (individually or in ensembles) in freely exploring/navigating rodents. In seeking to understand the fundamental mechanisms underlying navigation, these studies have uncovered a panoply of “canonical neurons” (e.g., place, head-direction, and grid cells) that exhibit activity patterns that are recognizable as components of a spatial code. However, it is increasingly clear that much or even most of the brain is involved in navigation, and that many navigationally involved neurons do not have canonical space-coding properties. Understanding these other areas, their functions, and the nature of the less-obvious coding schemes is challenging but important, and so this chapter asks: How do we get traction on these more complex, integrated and distributed signals? What new technology or experimental paradigms could help? What are the next steps for neurobiological navigation research? Discussion concludes with an examination of whether the mammalian navigation network has developed, over evolutionary time, to support other types of cognition.