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Updated: Jun 30, 2025
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Preparation of Parasagittal Slices for the Investigation of Dorsal-ventral Organization of the Rodent Medial Entorhinal Cortex
Published on: March 28, 2012
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Changes in spatial self-consciousness elicit grid cell-like representation in the entorhinal cortex.
Hyuk-June Moon1,2,3, Louis Albert1,2, Emanuela De Falco1,2
1Neuro-X Institute, Faculty of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Geneva 1202, Switzerland.
Summary
Illusory self-location shifts, driven by bodily cues, activate grid cell-like representations in the brain. This brain activity mirrors that seen during virtual navigation, showing the brain uses similar mechanisms for self-location encoding.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex (EC) are crucial for spatial navigation and self-location encoding.
- Body-derived multisensory cues are fundamental to the sense of self and spatial awareness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if illusory self-location shifts, induced by bodily stimuli, can trigger grid cell-like representations (GCLR) in the EC.
- To compare GCLR evoked by illusory self-location shifts with that during conventional virtual navigation.
Main Methods:
- Systematic induction of illusory self-location drifts using visuo-tactile bodily stimulation.
- Maintaining a fixed visual viewpoint, excluding conventional virtual navigation.
- Evaluating entorhinal GCLR using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Main Results:
- Illusory self-location changes, independent of environmental cues, evoked entorhinal GCLR.
- The strength of GCLR correlated with the magnitude of perceived self-location shifts.
- Grid orientation during illusory shifts matched that of conventional virtual navigation.
Conclusions:
- Entorhinal GCLR is recruited by both environmental (visual) and self-motion (bodily) cues for spatial representation.
- Perceptual multisensory bodily cues can drive entorhinal GCLR, similar to visual navigation cues.
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