Department of Brain & Cognitive SCIENCES
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Research Highlights

2024 Differential functions of the dorsal and intermediate regions of the hippocampus for optimal goal-directed navigation in VR space

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작성자 최고관리자 작성일 24-07-03 16:15

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Professor
Inah Lee
Authors
Hyeri HwangSeung-Woo JinInah Lee
Journal
eLife
Journal Info
online
Year
2024

Do place cells encode the values associated with different locations? The answer to this question may not be found easily in the literature because recording place cells from the hippocampus in freely moving animals has been largely conducted in the dorsal subregion of the hippocampus in an experimental setting with relatively homogeneous spatial values. Place cells in the intermediate hippocampus exhibit a more pronounced response to changes in spatial value compared to those in the dorsal hippocampus. In the current study, we designed a behavioral task in a VR environment to test if the dorsal and intermediate regions of the hippocampus could be functionally dissociated during value-dependent spatial navigation. In our VR task, rats navigated to a circular arena surrounded by rich visual landmarks in a VR environment. Rats were trained to navigate toward one of two hidden reward zones, one with a high reward value and the other with a low value. After learning, inactivating the dorsal hippocampus led to increased errors in precisely locating the reward zone but still made rats visit higher-reward zones reliably. Conversely, inactivating the intermediate hippocampus resulted in fewer visits to the zone associated with higher values. Our results suggest that the dorsal and intermediate regions of the hippocampus are important for precise spatial wayfinding using allocentric visual landmarks and value-guided behavioral decision-making, respectively.

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