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

项目摘要 空间导航和记忆是动物和人类生活的关键方面。以确定大脑是如何 为了支持这些过程，我们的实验考察了特定类型的空间和非空间知识如何 以人类内侧颞叶单个神经元和神经元群体的活动为代表。 在此之前，我们和其他人证明了空间知识是由“地点”和“网格细胞”网络支持的， 它们中的每一个通过在各个位置和组激活来表示人在环境中的位置 分别位于不同的地点。尽管人类的内侧颞叶也被认为对记忆至关重要， 想象、预测和规划，空间单元类型是否以及如何也支持这些复杂形式的 认知是未知的。在这里，我们将测试这样的假设，即位置和栅格状的发射模式以及其他 海马体系统中的细胞类型，支持更复杂的空间和 超越位置神经编码的非空间信息，用于人类这些不同的、相互关联的方面 认知力。我们通过直接记录人类的海马体和内嗅体来研究这个问题。 从神经外科癫痫患者执行计算机化虚拟现实任务的网络。在我们的目标1中 我们将检查内侧颞叶神经元的放电模式，包括位置样和网格样 激发，超越了对空间信息进行编码，以表示每个环境的“认知地图”， 表示连接了哪些位置和路径集以及如何奖励它们。在目标2中，我们检查 地点和格网单元在表示多尺度信息(包括大尺度地理信息)中的作用。在AIM 3、我们考察了人类场所细胞的活动是否以一种方式代表想象和观察的地点 类似于在活动导航期间出现的活动。最后，在目标4中，我们测量人类的“时间细胞”并进行测试 情景记忆中时间细胞的活动是否与地点细胞和网格细胞的性质相似 导航。我们提出的研究可能会对核心神经元反应产生根本性的见解 以及作为空间和非空间记忆和认知基础的计算机制。

Project Summary Spatial navigation and memory are critical aspects of life for animals and humans. To identify how the brain supports these processes, our experiments examine how specific types of spatial and non-spatial knowledge are represented by the activity of single neurons and neuronal populations in the human medial temporal lobe. Previously, we and others showed that spatial knowledge is supported by networks of “place” and “grid cells,” each of which represent a person’s location in an environment by activating at individual locations and groups of locations, respectively. Though the human medial temporal lobe is also believed to be critical for memory, imagination, prediction, and planning, whether and how spatial cell types also support these complex forms of cognition is unknown. Here we will test the hypothesis that place- and grid-like firing patterns, as well as other cell types in the hippocampal system, support the neuronal representation of more complex spatial and non-spatial information beyond the neural coding of location for these diverse, inter-related aspects of human cognition. We examine this issue by conducting direct recordings of the human hippocampal and entorhinal network from neurosurgical epilepsy patients performing computerized virtual-reality tasks. In Aim 1 of our project we will examine whether medial temporal lobe neuronal firing patterns, including place- and grid-like firing, go beyond encoding spatial information to represent a “cognitive map” of each environment that represents which sets of locations and paths are connected and how they are rewarded. In Aim 2, we examine the role of place and grid cells in representing multiscale information, including large-scale geography. In Aim 3, we probe whether the activity of human place cells represent imagined and viewed locations in a manner similar to the activity present during active navigation. Finally, in Aim 4 we measure human “time cells” and test whether the activity of time cells in episodic memory are similar to the properties of place and grid cells during navigation. Our proposed studies are likely to create fundamental insights into the core neuronal responses and computational mechanisms that underlie both spatial and non-spatial memory and cognition.