#placecells — Public Fediverse posts

Sometimes you wonder why the labs with all the funding (not just this one! This is just one example) do not do slightly more risky experiments instead of rediscovering the wheel.. 🤔 This is something anyone who records in hippocampus has observed and there's even specific papers about it.

Place cells in CA1 lack topographical organization of firing locations

See for example Redish et al., 2001: Independence of Firing Correlates of Anatomically Proximate Hippocampal Pyramidal Cells from @adredish (at least it is cited)

#PlaceCells #Hippocampus #SpatialCognition

@aheadofthenerve Super nice, thanks for this excellent preprint and explainer thread!
If you don't mind me asking, how do you think this switch in population code is triggered? Is it just a change in excitatory input patterns to CA1 that overrides an otherwise active place cell network? Or also a change in neuromodulatory input (e.g. dopaminergic burst or so)?

If ok I'd also add some hashtags for greater reach:
#neuroscience #newpreprint #tootsuite #hippocampus #placecells #invivo

@aheadofthenerve Super nice, thanks for this excellent preprint and explainer thread!
If you don't mind me asking, how do you think this switch in population code is triggered? Is it just a change in excitatory input patterns to CA1 that overrides an otherwise active place cell network? Or also a change in neuromodulatory input (e.g. dopaminergic burst or so)?

If ok I'd also add some hashtags for greater reach:
#neuroscience #newpreprint #tootsuite #hippocampus #placecells #invivo

@aheadofthenerve Super nice, thanks for this excellent preprint and explainer thread!
If you don't mind me asking, how do you think this switch in population code is triggered? Is it just a change in excitatory input patterns to CA1 that overrides an otherwise active place cell network? Or also a change in neuromodulatory input (e.g. dopaminergic burst or so)?

If ok I'd also add some hashtags for greater reach:
#neuroscience #newpreprint #tootsuite #hippocampus #placecells #invivo

@aheadofthenerve Super nice, thanks for this excellent preprint and explainer thread!
If you don't mind me asking, how do you think this switch in population code is triggered? Is it just a change in excitatory input patterns to CA1 that overrides an otherwise active place cell network? Or also a change in neuromodulatory input (e.g. dopaminergic burst or so)?

If ok I'd also add some hashtags for greater reach:
#neuroscience #newpreprint #tootsuite #hippocampus #placecells #invivo

@aheadofthenerve Super nice, thanks for this excellent preprint and explainer thread!
If you don't mind me asking, how do you think this switch in population code is triggered? Is it just a change in excitatory input patterns to CA1 that overrides an otherwise active place cell network? Or also a change in neuromodulatory input (e.g. dopaminergic burst or so)?

If ok I'd also add some hashtags for greater reach:
#neuroscience #newpreprint #tootsuite #hippocampus #placecells #invivo

Very cool retrospective AND review of the hippocampal #SpatialCognition field from Neil Burgess:
Oscillations and Boundaries in My Route Through the Hippocampal Cognitive Map

Mentions @adredish @tom_hartley and many others, unfortunately not on Mastodon I think
#Neuroscience #PlaceCells #GridCells #Hippocampus #ThetaRhythm

📖 Vaidya et al. investigate how #hippocampal #CA1 #PlaceCells form expanding #memory representations over days. Using longitudinal in vivo recordings, they show that stable #PlaceFields progressively emerge as active cells increase their likelihood of remaining active across sessions. This gradual stabilization hinges on #behavioral‑timescale #SynapticPlasticity, offering a new model of how CA1 memories solidify w/o #CatastrophicOverwriting.

🌍 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-01986-3

#Hippocampus #Neuroscience

#PlaceCells often have elongated place fields next to an environment's boundaries.
Is there any paper where this phenomenon is directly predicted by the #SuccessorRepresentation model of place cells?

#SpatialCognition #Neuroscience #Hippocampus

#NeuroESC #JournalClub
Reading Mental exploration of future choices during immobility theta oscillations

If you've read it, will you let me know what you think?

The authors look at #ThetaSequences in a working memory task in a radial arm maze. They find theta during immobility (makes sense, e.g. we saw that in our two-goals task). They also find that theta sequences might preferentially represent the next goal (also makes sense, e.g. Hippocampal theta sequences reflect current goals)!

I have only done a quick reading so far, but am confused by a few points:

• the decoding is done on all cells (pyramidals and interneurons), shouldn't it be done on pyramidal or #PlaceCells only?
• the cell counts are quite low (often less than 40 pyrs) when I would have thought at least 50 place cells would be needed for this kind of maze. I guess that shows that #Neuropixels are not the best to record from dCA1!

• the decoded algorithm itself includes a ' position transition matrix' which seems like it would bias decoding towards realistic trajectories that the rat is about to do??? (but I probably missed something)

• also, this study is very related to this other paper, which is not discussed or even cited (😕 ):
  Assembly Responses of Hippocampal CA1 Place Cells Predict Learned Behavior in Goal-Directed Spatial Tasks on the Radial Eight-Arm Maze #CsisvariLab

Let me know what you think!

#LeutgebLab #NeuroRat #Neuroscience #SpatialCognition

New review on the “spatial cells” across different species! Looks very interesting:
Neural mechanisms for spatial cognition across vertebrates
Vinepinsky & Segev 2023

Small but important comment: it is perfectly normal for place cells to have multiple #PlaceFields ! Only in very small environments (<80cm diameter) will you mostly see single-field place cells. The single field is probably more the exception than the rule in the natural world.

#NeuroPaper #Review #Neuroscience #PlaceCells #HeadDirectionCells #GridCells #BVCs #CrossSpecies