The Role of Place and Grid Cells in Human Spatial Navigation and Memory

 描述(申请人提供)：空间导航和学习是人类和动物生活中至关重要的一部分。我们的实验考察了人类内侧颞叶的单个细胞是如何代表空间知识的。我们测试了这样一个假设，即人类导航是由地点和网格单元组成的网络支持的，每一个网络都通过分别在单个地点和一组地点激活来帮助编码一个人在空间环境中的位置。我们通过直接记录执行计算机虚拟导航任务的癫痫患者的这些细胞的活动，来探索网格和放置细胞在人类空间导航和记忆中的功能作用。我们工作的第一个和第四个具体目标是测试动物模型中的网格和位置细胞理论是否与人类相关。首先，我们通过进行一项新的实验来探索这些细胞的特性，以及它们与神经元振荡的相互作用，该实验经过优化，以揭示人类神经对空间的表征。我们将测试人类的位置和网格细胞是否最突出于右半球，这与人类空间处理是右侧化的经典发现一致。 我们的第二个和第三个特定目标是探测网格，并将单元放置在更复杂的导航任务中。在这里，我们测试新的神经编码模式，而不是动物身上发现的模式。我们将测试地点和网格单元是否参与相关环境之间的空间知识传输，以及在主动导航之外表示空间信息。我们的研究很可能对人类导航的神经信号有深入的了解 它们也对揭示对人类记忆的更广泛理解有影响。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Spatial navigation and learning is a critical part of life for humans and animals. Our experiments examine how spatial knowledge is represented by individual cells in the human medial temporal lobe. We test the hypothesis that human navigation is supported by networks of place and grid cells, each of which help encode a person's location in a spatial environment by activating at individual locations and groups of locations, respectively. We probe the functional roles of grid and place cells in human spatial navigation and memory by directly recording the activity of these cells from epilepsy patients performing a computer virtual-navigation task. Specific Aims one and four of our work test whether theories of grid and place cells from animal models are relevant for humans. First, we probe the properties of these cells, and their interactions with neuronal oscillations, by conducting a new experiment that is optimized to reveal the human neural representation of space. We will test whether human place and grid cells are most prominent to the right hemisphere, consistent with the classic finding that human spatial processing is right lateralized. Our second and third Specific Aims probe grid and place cells in more complex navigation tasks. Here we test for new neural coding patterns beyond those found in animals. We will test whether place and grid cells are involved in transferring spatial knowledge between related environments and in representing spatial information in outside of active navigation. Our research studies are likely to yield insights into the neural signals that allow humans to navigate and they also have implications for revealing a broader understanding of human memory.