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Updated: Oct 1, 2025

Recording Spatially Restricted Oscillations in the Hippocampus of Behaving Mice
Published on: July 1, 2018
Goal discrimination in hippocampal nonplace cells when place information is ambiguous
Lu Zhang1, Stephanie M Prince1,2, Abigail L Paulson1
1Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332.
Abstract:
SignificanceGoal-directed spatial navigation has been found to rely on hippocampal neurons that are spatially modulated. We show that "nonplace" cells without significant spatial modulation play a role in discriminating goals when environmental cues for goals are ambiguous. This nonplace cell activity is performance-dependent and is modulated by gamma oscillations. Finally, nonplace cell goal discrimination coding fails in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Together, these results show that nonplace cell firing can signal unique task-relevant information when spatial information is ambiguous; these signals depend on performance and are absent in a mouse model of AD.

