Spatial exploration and navigation in the primate hippocampus

灵长类海马体的空间探索和导航

• 批准号: 10732455
• 负责人: CORY T MILLER
• 金额: $ 64.42万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-30 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10732455
• 关键词: Spatial; exploration; navigation; primate; hippocampus

Project Summary. Human and nonhuman primates are highly visual animals that are predominantly active during the daylight hours. Yet our understanding of the neural mechanisms supporting spatial navigation is largely based on studies of nocturnal, burrowing rodents with poor vision. Indeed, studies of human and nonhuman primates have already demonstrated that spatial positions can be encoded in the hippocampus exclusively by visual inspection of a scene (i.e. spatial-view cells). At the same time, primate hippocampus also comprises populations of neurons that encode self-position in a scene during locomotion (i.e. place cells). Ultimately, primate representations of space must integrate these parallel threads of spatial information, but precisely how this occurs within the primate hippocampus is entirely unknown. Here we propose to address this fundamental question by leveraging several conceptual, technical and computational innovations to examine the neural basis of spatial representations in the hippocampus of marmoset monkeys. Aim 1 complements our previous work demonstrating canonical place cells in marmoset hippocampus during free-navigation to characterize whether neurons in this neural structure can also encode space through visual exploration of a scene. Aim 2 seeks to systematically characterize behavioral strategies in marmosets when searching for food in naturalistic 3-dimensional `forest' environments. Specifically, we will test how visual exploration and physical navigation of the landscape complement each other in marmoset spatial behavior. Experiments in Aim 3 build on these results to record the activity of hippocampal neurons of freely-moving marmosets in the same 3D naturalistic environments. By integrating head-mounted, wireless eye-tracking technology and video tracking of the animals position in space, we will explicate the role of different primate hippocampal subfields for exploration and navigation.

项目摘要。 人类和非人类灵长类动物是高度视觉动物，主要在白天活动。 然而，我们对支持空间导航的神经机制的理解很大程度上基于以下研究： 夜间活动、穴居的啮齿动物，视力较差。事实上，对人类和非人类灵长类动物的研究已经 证明空间位置可以仅通过视觉检查在海马体中编码 场景（即空间视图单元）。同时，灵长类动物的海马体也包含神经元群 编码运动过程中场景中的自身位置（即位置单元）。最终，灵长类动物的代表 空间必须整合这些并行的空间信息线程，但确切地说，这在灵长类动物中是如何发生的 海马体完全未知。在这里，我们建议通过利用几个方法来解决这个基本问题 概念、技术和计算创新，以检查空间表征的神经基础 狨猴的海马体。目标 1 补充了我们之前展示规范地位的工作 狨猴海马细胞在自由导航期间表征该神经结构中的神经元是否 还可以通过对场景的视觉探索来对空间进行编码。目标 2 旨在系统地表征 狨猴在自然 3 维“森林”环境中寻找食物时的行为策略。 具体来说，我们将测试景观的视觉探索和物理导航如何相辅相成 狨猴的空间行为。目标 3 中的实验以这些结果为基础来记录海马体的活动 在相同的 3D 自然环境中自由移动的狨猴的神经元。通过集成头戴式， 无线眼球追踪技术和视频追踪动物在空间中的位置，我们将阐述其作用 用于探索和导航的不同灵长类海马亚区。