Grid Cell Firing Patterns Maintain their Hexagonal Firing Patterns on a Circular Track

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex exhibit hexagonal firing patterns in 2D environments.
• Continuous attractor network models propose these patterns arise from network dynamics.

Conclusions:

• The findings strongly support the continuous attractor network theory for grid cell function.
• Population autocorrelation is a powerful novel method for analyzing grid cell activity in undersampled environments.
• Grid cells utilize an allocentric code for spatial representation.