Seminars and Colloquia
Biology
Dissecting the hippocampal spatial map one building block at a time
Wed, Aug 29, 2018,
04:00 PM to 05:00 PM
at Seminar Room 34, 2nd Floor, Main Building
Dr. Sachin Deshmukh
Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
Abstract:
Hippocampus needs to process spatial and nonspatial information to perform its function in spatial navigation and memory. How is the spatial map put together? Cortical inputs to the hippocampus are channelled through the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC). MEC inputs convey spatial information. In contrast, our experiments show that LEC inputs to hippocampus can carry nonspatial as well as landmark-derived spatial information. This suggests that the functional dichotomy between LEC and MEC can be described as LEC conveying external sensory input—both spatial and nonspatial—to the hippocampus, in contrast to the self-motion based, internal processing of MEC.
What does the hippocampus do with this information? We will discuss various forms of representations created in the hippocampus using the combination of internally generated and external inputs, and how different parts of the hippocampus process this information differentially.
Finally, time permitting, we will look at how the hippocampal representation of space alters as function of environmental complexity.
