Dissociating the past from the present in the activity of place cells

Continuous decision to wait for a future reward is guided by fronto-hippocampal anticipatory dynamics

Deciding whether to wait for a future reward is crucial for surviving in an uncertain world. While seeking rewards, agents anticipate a reward in the present environment and constantly face a trade-off between staying in their environment or leaving it. It remains unclear, however, how humans make continuous decisions in such situations. Here, we show that anticipatory activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus underpins continuous stay-leave decision-making. Participants awaited real liquid rewards available after tens of seconds, and their continuous decision was tracked by dynamic brain activity associated with the anticipation of a reward. Participants stopped waiting more frequently and sooner after they experienced longer delays and received smaller rewards. When the dynamic anticipatory brain activity was enhanced in the anterior prefrontal cortex, participants remained in their current environment, but when this activity diminished, they left the environment. Moreover, while experiencing a delayed reward in a novel environment, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus showed anticipatory activity. Finally, the activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was enhanced in participants adopting a leave strategy, whereas those remaining stationary showed enhanced hippocampal activity. Our results suggest that fronto-hippocampal anticipatory dynamics underlie continuous decision-making while anticipating a future reward.

Hippocampus activation related to 'real-time' processing of visuospatial change

The delay associated with cerebral processing time implies a lack of real-time representation of changes in the observed environment. To bridge this gap for motor actions in a dynamical environment, the brain uses predictions of the most plausible future reality based on previously provided information. To optimise these predictions, adjustments to actual experiences are necessary. This requires a perceptual memory buffer. In our study we gained more insight how the brain treats (real-time) information by comparing cerebral activations related to judging past-, present- and future locations of a moving ball, respectively. Eighteen healthy subjects made these estimations while fMRI data was obtained. All three conditions evoked bilateral dorsal-parietal and premotor activations, while judgment of the location of the ball at the moment of judgment showed increased bilateral posterior hippocampus activation relative to making both future and past judgments at the one-second time-sale. Since the condition of such 'real-time' judgments implied undistracted observation of the ball's actual movements, the associated hippocampal activation is consistent with the concept that the hippocampus participates in a top-down exerted sensory gating mechanism. In this way, it may play a role in novelty (saliency) detection.

Hippocampal replay in the awake state: a potential substrate for memory consolidation and retrieval

The hippocampus is required for the encoding, consolidation and retrieval of event memories. Although the neural mechanisms that underlie these processes are only partially understood, a series of recent papers point to awake memory replay as a potential contributor to both consolidation and retrieval. Replay is the sequential reactivation of hippocampal place cells that represent previously experienced behavioral trajectories and occurs frequently in the awake state, particularly during periods of relative immobility. Awake replay may reflect trajectories through either the current environment or previously visited environments that are spatially remote. The repetition of learned sequences on a compressed time scale is well suited to promote memory consolidation in distributed circuits beyond the hippocampus, suggesting that consolidation occurs in both the awake and sleeping animal. Moreover, sensory information can influence the content of awake replay, suggesting a role for awake replay in memory retrieval.

Paradoxical sleep as a tool for understanding the hippocampal mechanisms of contextual memory

Existing data on the involvement of the hippocampus in contextual memory and the fact that contextual memory is impaired in dreams occurring during paradoxical sleep allowed us to suggest that one of the causes of this impairment consists of changes in the efficiency of synaptic transmission in the hippocampus due to increases (as compared with waking) in the concentrations of acetylcholine, dopamine, and cortisol, as well as the absence of serotonin and noradrenaline. Our previous analysis showed that in paradoxical sleep, long-term depression can be induced all components of the polysynaptic pathway through the hippocampal formation, while potentiation can occur at the inputs from the entorhinal cortex to hippocampal fields CA1 and CA3 and in the associative connections in field CA3. It is hypothesized that the correct functioning of episodic memory requires efficient transmission of signals in each component of the polysynaptic pathway through the hippocampus, allowing a neuronal representation of the context to be created within it. In the state of waking, reproduction of the context of an episode simultaneously activates the neuronal representation of the context remembered in the hippocampus and neuronal representations of the details of the episode remembered in those areas of the cortex in which they were processed. It follows from the proposed mechanism that any neurotransmitter or neuropeptide able to promote longterm potentiation in all components of the polysynaptic pathway through the hippocampus can improve episodic memory. As the consequences of the mechanism are consistent with experimental data, it can be used to seek agents improving episodic memory.

Impaired long-term stability of CA1 place cell representation in mice lacking the transcription factor zif268/egr1

Zif268 is a transcriptional regulator that plays a crucial role in maintenance of the late phases of hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) and consolidation of spatial memories. Because the hippocampal place cell system is essential for long-term spatial memory, we tested the hypothesis that zif268 is required for long-term stability of hippocampal place cell representations by recording CA1 place cells in mice lacking zif268. We found that zif268 gene deletion destabilized the representation of a familiar environment after exposure to a novel environment and impaired the long-term (24 h), but not short-term (1 h), stability of newly formed representations. These impairments could be rescued by repeated exposure to the novel environment, however. These results indicate that zif268 contributes to the long-term stability of spatial representations in CA1 and support the notion that the long-term stability of place cell representations requires transcription-dependent mechanisms similar to those observed in LTP.

Awake replay of remote experiences in the hippocampus

Hippocampal replay is thought to be essential for the consolidation of event memories in hippocampal–neocortical networks. Replay is present during both sleep and waking behavior, but while sleep replay involves the reactivation of stored representations in the absence of specific sensory inputs, awake replay is thought to depend on sensory input from the current environment. Here we show that stored representations are reactivated during both waking and sleep replay. We found frequent awake replay of sequences of rat hippocampal place cells from a previous experience. This spatially remote replay was as common as local replay of the current environment and was most robust when the animal had recently been in motion as compared to during extended periods of quiescence. These results indicate that the hippocampus consistently replays past experiences during brief pauses in waking behavior, suggesting a role for waking replay in memory consolidation and retrieval.

Mental time travel across the disciplines: The future looks bright

There is a growing interest in mental time travel in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, developmental psychology, comparative psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Here we review current issues in each of these disciplines. To help move the debates forward we name and distinguish 15 key hypotheses about mental time travel. We argue that foresight has for too long lived in the shadows of research on memory and call for further research efforts.

Hippocampal long-term depression: master or minion in declarative memory processes?

The neural mechanisms for the formation of declarative memory (memory for facts and events) are believed to be integrated from processes mediated by hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD). Traditionally, LTP has been designated as the main mediator of spatial memory storage in the hippocampus, whereas LTD has been assigned an auxiliary role in signal-to-noise regulation or in forgetting. It has recently become apparent, however, that LTD contributes directly to hippocampal information storage. In fact, LTD could dominate in the processing of precise spatial characteristics. Accumulating evidence supports the idea that LTP and LTD enable distinct and separate forms of information storage, which together facilitate the generation of a spatial cognitive map.