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研究揭示内丘脑皮层中三维空间的局部有序表示
2021-08-15 13:18

以色列魏茨曼科学研究所Nachum Ulanovsky研究组揭示内丘脑皮层中三维空间的局部有序表示。该研究于2021年8月11日在线发表于国际一流学术期刊《自然》。

研究人员表示,当动物在二维表面上进行导航时,内侧内丘脑皮层(MEC)中被称为网格细胞的神经元会在动物经过以六边形格子排列的多个位置(发射场)时被激活。然而,尽管世界是三维的,但目前还不清楚MEC如何表示三维空间。

研究人员记录了飞行蝙蝠的MEC细胞,并确定了几类空间神经元,包括三维边界细胞、三维头部方向的细胞和具有多个三维发射场的神经元。这些多场神经元中有许多是三维网格细胞,其相邻的场被一个特征性的距离隔开,形成了一个局部秩序,但缺乏任何全局性的场的网格排列。因此,虽然二维网格细胞形成了一个全局格子,其特点是局部和全局秩序,但三维网格细胞只表现出局部秩序,为空间创造了一个局部秩序的尺度。

研究人员将网格细胞建模为来自场之间的成对相互作用,这在二维中产生了六边形格子,在三维中产生了局部秩序,从而用一个统一的模型来描述了二维和三维网格细胞。这些数据和模型共同阐明了哺乳动物大脑中三维和二维空间神经编码之间的基本差异和相似性。

附:英文原文

Title: Locally ordered representation of 3D space in the entorhinal cortex

Author: Ginosar, Gily, Aljadeff, Johnatan, Burak, Yoram, Sompolinsky, Haim, Las, Liora, Ulanovsky, Nachum

Issue&Volume: 2021-08-11

Abstract: As animals navigate on a two-dimensional surface, neurons in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) known as grid cells are activated when the animal passes through multiple locations (firing fields) arranged in a hexagonal lattice that tiles the locomotion surface1. However, although our world is three-dimensional, it is unclear how the MEC represents 3D space2. Here we recorded from MEC cells in freely flying bats and identified several classes of spatial neurons, including 3D border cells, 3D head-direction cells, and neurons with multiple 3D firing fields. Many of these multifield neurons were 3D grid cells, whose neighbouring fields were separated by a characteristic distance—forming a local order—but lacked any global lattice arrangement of the fields. Thus, whereas 2D grid cells form a global lattice—characterized by both local and global order—3D grid cells exhibited only local order, creating a locally ordered metric for space. We modelled grid cells as emerging from pairwise interactions between fields, which yielded a hexagonal lattice in 2D and local order in 3D, thereby describing both 2D and 3D grid cells using one unifying model. Together, these data and model illuminate the fundamental differences and similarities between neural codes for 3D and 2D space in the mammalian brain.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03783-x

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03783-x

Nature:《自然》,创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团,最新IF:69.504
官方网址:http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接:http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html


本期文章:《自然》:Online/在线发表

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