2013/04/18 by Michael M. Yartsev, Nachum Ulanovsky · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Memory and Neural Mechanisms #Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior #Circadian rhythm and melatonin #Hippocampal formation #Hippocampus #ENCODE #Neuroscience #Space (punctuation) #Representation (politics) #Biology #Biological neural network #Position (finance) #Computer science
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1235338
openalex publication_date 2013/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Many animals, on air, water, or land, navigate in three-dimensional (3D) environments, yet it remains unclear how brain circuits encode the animal's 3D position. We recorded single neurons in freely flying bats, using a wireless neural-telemetry system, and studied how hippocampal place cells encode 3D volumetric space during flight. Individual place cells were active in confined 3D volumes, and in >90% of the neurons, all three axes were encoded with similar resolution. The 3D place fields from different neurons spanned different locations and collectively represented uniformly the available space in the room. Theta rhythmicity was absent in the firing patterns of 3D place cells. These results suggest that the bat hippocampus represents 3D volumetric space by a uniform and nearly isotropic rate code.