Spatial memory articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The contribution of visual experience to the formation of cognitive maps in humans is not well understood. Here, the authors show using fMRI and an imagined navigation paradigm, that sighted people display hexagonal grid-like neural coding, while blind people show neural representations consistent with a square grid.

    • Federica Sigismondi
    • , Yangwen Xu
    •  & Roberto Bottini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dorsal hippocampus plays an important role for spatial memory, but how its outputs guide behavior is not fully understood. Here, the authors show that nucleus accumbens-specific hippocampal projection neurons carry a highly conjunctive code of spatial and action information that directs spatial reward memory-guided appetitive behaviors.

    • Oliver Barnstedt
    • , Petra Mocellin
    •  & Stefan Remy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) is hypothesized to function as a cognitive map for memory-guided navigation. Here, the authors demonstrate that the establishment of a spatially consistent MEC map across learning correlates with, and is necessary for, successful spatial memory.

    • Taylor J. Malone
    • , Nai-Wen Tien
    •  & Yi Gu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How neural responses to boundaries develop in the subiculum remains unknown. Here authors show that the receptive fields of Boundary Vector Cells (neurons signalling vector displacement to boundaries) are altered by environment geometry, with directional tunings aligning with square arena walls, including during development.

    • Laurenz Muessig
    • , Fabio Ribeiro Rodrigues
    •  & Thomas J. Wills

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lesions of dorsomedial, but not dorsolateral, striatum are associated with working memory impairments. Here, the authors investigate the role of a projection from medial prefrontal cortex to dorsomedial striatum in the maintenance of information during a working memory task in mice.

    • Maria Wilhelm
    • , Yaroslav Sych
    •  & Fritjof Helmchen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In mice, reactivation of neurons that express cFos during fear conditioning induces a behavioural response. Here the authors show that cFos expression in mouse dentate gyrus shifts every day to different neurons, even during highly consistent spatial navigation, and suggest this clock-like selection mechanism may aid the encoding of episodic memories.

    • Paul J. Lamothe-Molina
    • , Andreas Franzelin
    •  & Thomas G. Oertner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent work has shown that the tuning of hippocampal place cells changes unexpectedly across weeks, a phenomenon known as neural drift. Keinath et al. show that this drift occurs in a particular way, one which preserves the representation of context.

    • Alexandra T. Keinath
    • , Coralie-Anne Mosser
    •  & Mark P. Brandon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It remains unclear how the hippocampal region integrates position and self-motion information to update spatial representations. Here, the authors report grid and head direction cells as well as cells encoding self-motion parameters such as angular head velocity and speed, and find conjunctive representations of these different parameters.

    • Davide Spalla
    • , Alessandro Treves
    •  & Charlotte N. Boccara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors examine how we differentiate highly similar places from each other. They provide evidence for complementary neural mechanisms in the human hippocampus and prefrontal cortex involved in processing interfering and common elements important to remembering places that we have visited.

    • Li Zheng
    • , Zhiyao Gao
    •  & Arne D. Ekstrom

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hippocampal place cells contribute to navigation and memory formation. Here, the authors use in vivo glutamate imaging to reveal patterns of excitatory input received by place cell dendrites and find more spatially tuned and functionally organized inputs arriving in the place field.

    • Michael D. Adoff
    • , Jason R. Climer
    •  & Daniel A. Dombeck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors compare place cell sequence coding during correct and error trials in a spatial memory task. Sequences coded paths that were longer and more temporally compressed during correct trials and developed a bias to replay paths to a goal location during rest periods of correct but not error trials.

    • Chenguang Zheng
    • , Ernie Hwaun
    •  & Laura Lee Colgin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To understand how spatial representations emerge and evolve across hippocampal subfields, we compared trial-to-trial dynamics of place cells in CA1 and CA3 in new environments and across days. CA1 place fields form early, shift backwards and partially remap across days whereas in CA3 they develop gradually and are more stable, suggesting distinct functional roles in representing space.

    • Can Dong
    • , Antoine D. Madar
    •  & Mark E. J. Sheffield

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stress-induced glucocorticoids cause mitochondrial damage in neurons, but they are not cleared by mitophagy. Here, the authors show that glucocorticoids inhibit NIX-dependent basal mitophagy, contributing to neurodegeneration in a mouse model that can be reversed by pretreatment with a NIX enhancer.

    • Gee Euhn Choi
    • , Hyun Jik Lee
    •  & Ho Jae Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perineuronal nets may stabilize synaptic connections. Here, the authors show that removal of perineuronal nets disrupts both the temporal and spatial organization of grid cell firing.

    • Ane Charlotte Christensen
    • , Kristian Kinden Lensjø
    •  & Torkel Hafting

  • Article
    | Open Access

    LTP and LTD are involved in shaping hippocampal place field representations. Here, the authors show that de novo pathway-specific hippocampal LTD changes dynamics and stability of newly formed place fields, regulating acquisition and maintenance of novel spatial information in adult rats.

    • Donovan M. Ashby
    • , Stan B. Floresco
    •  & Yu Tian Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neurons with grid firing fields are thought to play important roles in spatial cognition. Here, the authors show that in contrast to assumptions underlying current models and analyses, grid fields are modulated by local head direction; this suggests different mechanisms and new roles for grid firing.

    • Klara Gerlei
    • , Jessica Passlack
    •  & Matthew F. Nolan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Our brain derives a sense of direction from visual inputs. Here, the authors combine 7T-fMRI with predictive modeling of virtual navigation to show that the strength, width and topology of directional coding in the human brain reflect ongoing memory-guided behavior.

    • Matthias Nau
    • , Tobias Navarro Schröder
    •  & Christian F. Doeller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Keinath et al. show that information about the recent past is represented in the hippocampus through changes in firing rates in the absence of task demands. This representation is eliminated when DG–CA3 circuitry is inhibited.

    • Alexandra T. Keinath
    • , Andrés Nieto-Posadas
    •  & Mark P. Brandon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Path integration abilities, important for spatial navigation, vary widely across individuals and deteriorate in old age. This work shows that path integration errors in general, as well as age-related path integration deficits, are mainly caused by accumulating noise in people’s velocity estimation.

    • Matthias Stangl
    • , Ingmar Kanitscheider
    •  & Thomas Wolbers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thalamic head direction (HD) cells are necessary to establish spatial maps in the hippocampus. Here, the authors show that HD cells tuned to a particular direction are coupled to individual hippocampal ripple events during sleep, suggesting an influence of the replay of specific trajectories during sleep memory consolidation.

    • Guillaume Viejo
    •  & Adrien Peyrache

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Head direction neurons constitute the brain’s compass, and are classically known to indicate head orientation in the horizontal plane. Here, the authors show that head direction neurons form a three-dimensional compass that can also indicate head tilt, and anchors to gravity.

    • Dora E. Angelaki
    • , Julia Ng
    •  & Jean Laurens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microsaccades are small-amplitude, fixational eye movements that are largely thought to be involuntary. Here, the authors demonstrate that monkeys (and humans) can be easily trained to respond to a remembered target location with a volitional microsaccade, and that a population of superior colliculus neurons is selectively associated with them.

    • Konstantin F. Willeke
    • , Xiaoguang Tian
    •  & Ziad M. Hafed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Memory is hypothesised to depend on different brain regions that interact in a network. Here, the authors use case studies of stroke patients with amnesia from the literature to identify brain regions that are part of this network.

    • Michael A. Ferguson
    • , Chun Lim
    •  & Michael D. Fox

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The hippocampus represents an allocentric map of space, however, motor movements used for navigation are defined in an egocentric framework. Here, the authors report that dorsomedial striatal neurons exhibit an egocentric representation of the boundaries in the environment.

    • James R. Hinman
    • , G. William Chapman
    •  & Michael E. Hasselmo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Place cells are neurons in the hippocampus which encode an animal’s location in space. Here, in mice, the authors show that place cell activity is also modulated by the heading-direction of the animal relative to a particular “reference point” that can be either within or outside their enclosure.

    • P. E. Jercog
    • , Y. Ahmadian
    •  & E. R. Kandel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In an open field, the preferential firing of grid cells on a hexagonal lattice is formed by integrating external as well as self-motion cues. Here, the authors show that on a 1D circular track, path integration cues shape the spatial selectivity of grid cells while external cues determine the scale of the grid.

    • Pierre-Yves Jacob
    • , Fabrizio Capitano
    •  & Francesca Sargolini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theta oscillations are implicated in memory formation. Here, the authors show that low-theta oscillations in the hippocampus are differentially modulated between each hemisphere, with oscillations in the left increasing when successfully learning object–location pairs and in the right during spatial navigation.

    • Jonathan Miller
    • , Andrew J. Watrous
    •  & Joshua Jacobs

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theta- and gamma-frequency oscillatory synchrony correlates with spatial working memory performance. Here the authors report increases in theta-gamma cross-frequency coupling as a compensatory mechism associated with better working memory performance in models of cognitive dysfunction in mice.

    • Makoto Tamura
    • , Timothy J. Spellman
    •  & Joshua A. Gordon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spatial navigation and memory depend on neural coding of an organism’s location as well as large-scale knowledge of the environment, but how animals organize information in task-relevant spatial segments is not well understood. Here the authors show that, in rats, perirhinal neurons perform integrative operations, globally specifying where, in the task context, an animal is located.

    • Jeroen J. Bos
    • , Martin Vinck
    •  & Cyriel M. A. Pennartz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The hippocampus is known to support navigation, but how it processes possible paths to aid navigation is unknown. Here Javadiet al. show that entering streets drives hippocampal activity corresponding to the number of future paths, and that prefrontal activity corresponds to path-planning demands.

    • Amir-Homayoun Javadi
    • , Beatrix Emo
    •  & Hugo J. Spiers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identifying early signs of Alzheimer’s disease is important when it comes to diagnosis and treatment. Here, the authors identify subtle memory retrieval deficits and associated brain glucose uptake impairments in very young mouse models of Alzheimer’s, prior to plaque development.

    • V. Beglopoulos
    • , J. Tulloch
    •  & R. G. M. Morris

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