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Simmons CM, Moseley SC, Ogg JD, Zhou X, Johnson M, Wu W, Clark BJ, Wilber AA. A thalamo-parietal cortex circuit is critical for place-action coordination. Hippocampus 2023; 33:1252-1266. [PMID: 37811797 PMCID: PMC10872801 DOI: 10.1002/hipo.23578] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/30/2022] [Revised: 08/28/2023] [Accepted: 09/18/2023] [Indexed: 10/10/2023]
Abstract
The anterior and lateral thalamus (ALT) contains head direction cells that signal the directional orientation of an individual within the environment. ALT has direct and indirect connections with the parietal cortex (PC), an area hypothesized to play a role in coordinating viewer-dependent and viewer-independent spatial reference frames. This coordination between reference frames would allow an individual to translate movements toward a desired location from memory. Thus, ALT-PC functional connectivity would be critical for moving toward remembered allocentric locations. This hypothesis was tested in rats with a place-action task that requires associating an appropriate action (left or right turn) with a spatial location. There are four arms, each offset by 90°, positioned around a central starting point. A trial begins in the central starting point. After exiting a pseudorandomly selected arm, the rat had to displace the correct object covering one of two (left versus right) feeding stations to receive a reward. For a pair of arms facing opposite directions, the reward was located on the left, and for the other pair, the reward was located on the right. Thus, each reward location had a different combination of allocentric location and egocentric action. Removal of an object was scored as correct or incorrect. Trials in which the rat did not displace any objects were scored as "no selection" trials. After an object was removed, the rat returned to the center starting position and the maze was reset for the next trial. To investigate the role of the ALT-PC network, muscimol inactivation infusions targeted bilateral PC, bilateral ALT, or the ALT-PC network. Muscimol sessions were counterbalanced and compared to saline sessions within the same animal. All inactivations resulted in decreased accuracy, but only bilateral PC inactivations resulted in increased non selecting, increased errors, and longer latency responses on the remaining trials. Thus, the ALT-PC circuit is critical for linking an action with a spatial location for successful navigation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christine M Simmons
- Department of Psychology, Program of Neuroscience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
| | - Shawn C Moseley
- Department of Psychology, Program of Neuroscience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
| | - Jordan D Ogg
- Department of Psychology, Program of Neuroscience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
| | - Xinyu Zhou
- Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
| | - Madeline Johnson
- Department of Psychology, Program of Neuroscience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
| | - Wei Wu
- Department of Statistics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
| | - Benjamin J Clark
- Department of Psychology, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
| | - Aaron A Wilber
- Department of Psychology, Program of Neuroscience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
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2
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Ziegler MG, Liu ZX, Arsenault J, Dang C, Grady C, Rosenbaum RS, Moscovitch M. Differential involvement of the anterior and posterior hippocampus, parahippocampus, and retrosplenial cortex in making precise judgments of spatial distance and object size for remotely acquired memories of environments and objects. Cereb Cortex 2023; 33:10139-10154. [PMID: 37522288 PMCID: PMC10502799 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad272] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/28/2023] [Revised: 07/06/2023] [Accepted: 07/07/2023] [Indexed: 08/01/2023] Open
Abstract
The hippocampus is known to support processing of precise spatial information in recently learned environments. It is less clear, but crucial for theories of systems consolidation, to know whether it also supports processing of precise spatial information in familiar environments learned long ago and whether such precision extends to objects and numbers. In this fMRI study, we asked participants to make progressively more refined spatial distance judgments among well-known Toronto landmarks (whether landmark A is closer to landmark B or C) to examine hippocampal involvement. We also tested whether the hippocampus was similarly engaged in estimating magnitude regarding sizes of familiar animals and numbers. We found that the hippocampus was only engaged in spatial judgment. Activation was greater and lasted longer in the posterior than anterior hippocampus, which instead showed greater modulation as discrimination between spatial distances became more fine grained. These findings suggest that the anterior and posterior hippocampus have different functions which are influenced differently by estimation of differential distance. Similarly, parahippocampal-place-area and retrosplenial cortex were involved only in the spatial condition. By contrast, activation of the intraparietal sulcus was modulated by precision in all conditions. Therefore, our study supports the idea that the hippocampus and related structures are implicated in retrieving and operating even on remote spatial memories whenever precision is required, as posted by some theories of systems consolidation.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Zhong-Xu Liu
- Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Michigan–Dearborn, 4901 Evergreen RD, Dearborn, United States
| | - Jessica Arsenault
- Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto M6A 2E1, Canada
| | - Christa Dang
- Psychology Department, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1A1, Canada
| | - Cheryl Grady
- Psychology Department, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1A1, Canada
- Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto M6A 2E1, Canada
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto M5T 1R8, Canada
| | - R Shayna Rosenbaum
- Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto M6A 2E1, Canada
- Department of Psychology and Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto M3J 1P3, Canada
| | - Morris Moscovitch
- Psychology Department, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 1A1, Canada
- Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences, Toronto M6A 2E1, Canada
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Fan CL, Sokolowski HM, Rosenbaum RS, Levine B. What about "space" is important for episodic memory? WILEY INTERDISCIPLINARY REVIEWS. COGNITIVE SCIENCE 2023; 14:e1645. [PMID: 36772875 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.1645] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/19/2022] [Revised: 01/16/2023] [Accepted: 01/18/2023] [Indexed: 02/12/2023]
Abstract
Early cognitive neuroscientific research revealed that the hippocampus is crucial for spatial navigation in rodents, and for autobiographical episodic memory in humans. Researchers quickly linked these streams to propose that the human hippocampus supports memory through its role in representing space, and research on the link between spatial cognition and episodic memory in humans has proliferated over the past several decades. Different researchers apply the term "spatial" in a variety of contexts, however, and it remains unclear what aspect of space may be critical to memory. Similarly, "episodic" has been defined and tested in different ways. Naturalistic assessment of spatial memory and episodic memory (i.e., episodic autobiographical memory) is required to unify the scale and biological relevance in comparisons of spatial and mnemonic processing. Limitations regarding the translation of rodent to human research, human ontogeny, and inter-individual variability require greater consideration in the interpretation of this literature. In this review, we outline the aspects of space that are (and are not) commonly linked to episodic memory, and then we discuss these dimensions through the lens of individual differences in naturalistic autobiographical memory. Future studies should carefully consider which aspect(s) of space are being linked to memory within the context of naturalistic human cognition. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carina L Fan
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.,Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | | | - R Shayna Rosenbaum
- Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.,Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Brian Levine
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.,Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.,Department of Medicine, Neurology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Liang M, Zheng J, Isham E, Ekstrom A. Common and Distinct Roles of Frontal Midline Theta and Occipital Alpha Oscillations in Coding Temporal Intervals and Spatial Distances. J Cogn Neurosci 2021; 33:2311-2327. [PMID: 34347871 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01765] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Judging how far something is and how long it takes to get there is critical to memory and navigation. Yet, the neural codes for spatial and temporal information remain unclear, particularly the involvement of neural oscillations in maintaining such codes. To address these issues, we designed an immersive virtual reality environment containing teleporters that displace participants to a different location after entry. Upon exiting the teleporters, participants made judgments from two given options regarding either the distance they had traveled (spatial distance condition) or the duration they had spent inside the teleporters (temporal duration condition). We wirelessly recorded scalp EEG while participants navigated in the virtual environment by physically walking on an omnidirectional treadmill and traveling through teleporters. An exploratory analysis revealed significantly higher alpha and beta power for short-distance versus long-distance traversals, whereas the contrast also revealed significantly higher frontal midline delta-theta-alpha power and global beta power increases for short versus long temporal duration teleportation. Analyses of occipital alpha instantaneous frequencies revealed their sensitivity for both spatial distances and temporal durations, suggesting a novel and common mechanism for both spatial and temporal coding. We further examined the resolution of distance and temporal coding by classifying discretized distance bins and 250-msec time bins based on multivariate patterns of 2- to 30-Hz power spectra, finding evidence that oscillations code fine-scale time and distance information. Together, these findings support partially independent coding schemes for spatial and temporal information, suggesting that low-frequency oscillations play important roles in coding both space and time.
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Keinath AT, Rechnitz O, Balasubramanian V, Epstein RA. Environmental deformations dynamically shift human spatial memory. Hippocampus 2020; 31:89-101. [PMID: 32941670 DOI: 10.1002/hipo.23265] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/02/2020] [Revised: 09/02/2020] [Accepted: 09/05/2020] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
Place and grid cells in the hippocampal formation are commonly thought to support a unified and coherent cognitive map of space. This mapping mechanism faces a challenge when a navigator is placed in a familiar environment that has been deformed from its original shape. Under such circumstances, many transformations could plausibly serve to map a navigator's familiar cognitive map to the deformed space. Previous empirical results indicate that the firing fields of rodent place and grid cells stretch or compress in a manner that approximately matches the environmental deformation, and human spatial memory exhibits similar distortions. These effects have been interpreted as evidence that reshaping a familiar environment elicits an analogously reshaped cognitive map. However, recent work has suggested an alternative explanation, whereby deformation-induced distortions of the grid code are attributable to a mechanism that dynamically anchors grid fields to the most recently experienced boundary, thus causing history-dependent shifts in grid phase. This interpretation raises the possibility that human spatial memory will exhibit similar history-dependent dynamics. To test this prediction, we taught participants the locations of objects in a virtual environment and then probed their memory for these locations in deformed versions of this environment. Across three experiments with variable access to visual and vestibular cues, we observed the predicted pattern, whereby the remembered locations of objects were shifted from trial to trial depending on the boundary of origin of the participant's movement trajectory. These results provide evidence for a dynamic anchoring mechanism that governs both neuronal firing and spatial memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexandra T Keinath
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Ohad Rechnitz
- Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
| | | | - Russell A Epstein
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
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Ekstrom AD, Harootonian SK, Huffman DJ. Grid coding, spatial representation, and navigation: Should we assume an isomorphism? Hippocampus 2020; 30:422-432. [PMID: 31742364 PMCID: PMC7409510 DOI: 10.1002/hipo.23175] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/13/2019] [Revised: 10/21/2019] [Accepted: 10/28/2019] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
Abstract
Grid cells provide a compelling example of a link between cellular activity and an abstract and difficult to define concept like space. Accordingly, a representational perspective on grid coding argues that neural grid coding underlies a fundamentally spatial metric. Recently, some theoretical proposals have suggested extending such a framework to nonspatial cognition as well, such as category learning. Here, we provide a critique of the frequently employed assumption of an isomorphism between patterns of neural activity (e.g., grid cells), mental representation, and behavior (e.g., navigation). Specifically, we question the strict isomorphism between these three levels and suggest that human spatial navigation is perhaps best characterized by a wide variety of both metric and nonmetric strategies. We offer an alternative perspective on how grid coding might relate to human spatial navigation, arguing that grid coding is part of a much larger conglomeration of neural activity patterns that dynamically tune to accomplish specific behavioral outputs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arne D Ekstrom
- Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
| | | | - Derek J Huffman
- Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, California
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Vanier D, Sherwood C, Smaers J. Distinct Patterns of Hippocampal and Neocortical Evolution in Primates. BRAIN, BEHAVIOR AND EVOLUTION 2019; 93:171-181. [DOI: 10.1159/000500625] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2018] [Accepted: 04/28/2019] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
Because of the central role of the hippocampus in representing spatial and temporal details of experience, comparative studies of its volume and structure are relevant to understanding the evolution of representational memory across species. The hippocampal formation, however, is organized into separate anatomical subregions with distinct functions, and little is known about the evolutionary diversification of these subregions. We investigate relative volumetric changes in hippocampal subregions across a large sample of primate species. We then compare the evolution of the hippocampal formation to the neocortex. Results across hippocampal subregions indicate that, compared to strepsirrhines, the anthropoid lineage displays a decrease in relative CA3, fascia dentata, subiculum, and rhinal cortex volume in tandem with an increase in relative neocortical volume. These findings indicate that hippocampal function in anthropoids might be substantially augmented by the executive decision-making functions of the neocortex. Humans are found to have a unique cerebral organization combining increased relative CA3, subiculum, and rhinal cortex with increased relative neocortical volumes, suggesting that these regions may play a role in behaviors that are uniquely specialized in humans.
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Diersch N, Wolbers T. The potential of virtual reality for spatial navigation research across the adult lifespan. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2019; 222:222/Suppl_1/jeb187252. [PMID: 30728232 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.187252] [Citation(s) in RCA: 49] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/08/2023]
Abstract
Older adults often experience serious problems in spatial navigation, and alterations in underlying brain structures are among the first indicators for a progression to neurodegenerative diseases. Studies investigating the neural mechanisms of spatial navigation and its changes across the adult lifespan are increasingly using virtual reality (VR) paradigms. VR offers major benefits in terms of ecological validity, experimental control and options to track behavioral responses. However, navigation in the real world differs from navigation in VR in several aspects. In addition, the importance of body-based or visual cues for navigation varies between animal species. Incongruences between sensory and motor input in VR might consequently affect their performance to a different degree. After discussing the specifics of using VR in spatial navigation research across species, we outline several challenges when investigating age-related deficits in spatial navigation with the help of VR. In addition, we discuss ways to reduce their impact, together with the possibilities VR offers for improving navigational abilities in older adults.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nadine Diersch
- Aging & Cognition Research Group, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), 39120 Magdeburg, Germany
| | - Thomas Wolbers
- Aging & Cognition Research Group, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), 39120 Magdeburg, Germany.,Center for Behavioural Brain Sciences (CBBS), Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany.,Medical Faculty, University Hospital Magdeburg, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany
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