Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

VISUOSPATIAL COGNITION

Grid cells map the visual world

Nature Neuroscience volume 21, pages 161–162 (2018)Cite this article

Subjects

This article has been updated

Neuroimaging studies of human entorhinal cortex activity revealed 60-degree spatial periodicity, a hallmark of grid cells, as gaze movements were made throughout the visual field. This activity may serve as a framework for organizing visuospatial memory.

How do our brains achieve the remarkable feat of building vivid memories that allow us to recall past experiences? During our waking hours, we receive vast amounts of visual information and form memories of these visual experiences as consciously accessible episodic memories. We know that the brain structures critical for episodic memory do not work by storing the entire raw contents of an experience, like saving a digital movie file on a disk drive. Instead, memories are formed with many parallel layers representing object features and spatial relations within a context and are modulated by attention and emotion. Cells involved in episodic memory receive information from cognitive structures and from all available sensory systems, but the mechanisms by which this information is used to support mnemonic functions are not well-understood.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Fig. 1: Entorhinal grid cells tile the visual world.

Change history

  • 22 May 2018

    In the version of this article initially published, the ORCID links were missing for authors Nathaniel J. Killian and Elizabeth A. Buffalo. The error has been corrected in the HTML version of the article.

References

  1. Julian, J.B., Keinath, A.T., Frazzetta, G. & Epstein, R.A. Nat. Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-017-0049-1 (2018).

  2. Nau, M., Schröder, T.N., Bellmund, J.L.S. & Doeller, C.F. Nat. Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-017-0050-8 (2018).

  3. Killian, N. J., Jutras, M. J. & Buffalo, E. A. Nature 491, 761–764 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Hafting, T., Fyhn, M., Molden, S., Moser, M.-B. & Moser, E. I. Nature 436, 801–806 (2005).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Connor, C. E. & Knierim, J. J. Nat. Neurosci. 20, 1493–1503 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Doeller, C. F., Barry, C. & Burgess, N. Nature 463, 657–661 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Jacobs, J. et al. Nat. Neurosci. 16, 1188–1190 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Meister, M.L.R. & Buffalo, E.A. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/182220 (2017).

  9. Wilming, N., König, P., König, S. & Buffalo, E.A. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/183327 (2017).

  10. Kraus, B. J. et al. Neuron 88, 578–589 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Aronov, D., Nevers, R. & Tank, D. W. Nature 543, 719–722 (2017).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Horner, A. J., Bisby, J. A., Zotow, E., Bush, D. & Burgess, N. Curr. Biol. 26, 842–847 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Constantinescu, A. O., O’Reilly, J. X. & Behrens, T. E. J. Science 352, 1464–1468 (2016).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Killian, N. J., Potter, S. M. & Buffalo, E. A. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 112, 15743–15748 (2015).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Georges-François, P., Rolls, E. T. & Robertson, R. G. Cereb. Cortex 9, 197–212 (1999).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Nathaniel J. Killian

  2. Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington Medical School and Washington National Primate Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Elizabeth A. Buffalo

Authors
  1. Nathaniel J. Killian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Elizabeth A. Buffalo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth A. Buffalo.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Killian, N.J., Buffalo, E.A. Grid cells map the visual world. Nat Neurosci 21, 161–162 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-017-0062-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-017-0062-4

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing