Spatial exploration and navigation in the primate hippocampus

项目摘要。 人类和非人类灵长类动物是高度视觉动物，主要在白天活动。 然而，我们对支持空间导航的神经机制的理解在很大程度上是基于以下研究： 夜间活动的穴居啮齿动物，视力差。事实上，对人类和非人类灵长类动物的研究已经 证明了空间位置可以通过视觉检查在海马中专门编码。 场景（即空间视图单元）。同时，灵长类动物的海马体也包括神经元群体 其在运动期间编码场景中的自身位置（即，放置单元）。最终，灵长类动物的 空间必须整合这些平行的空间信息线索，但这在灵长类动物中是如何发生的呢？ 海马体是完全未知的。在这里，我们建议通过利用几个 概念，技术和计算创新，以研究空间表征的神经基础， 绒猴的海马体。目标1补充了我们以前的工作，证明规范的地方 在自由航行过程中，研究了绒猴海马中的神经元细胞，以确定该神经结构中的神经元是否 也可以通过对场景的视觉探索来编码空间。目标2旨在系统地描述 在自然的三维“森林”环境中寻找食物时，绒猴的行为策略。 具体来说，我们将测试景观的视觉探索和物理导航如何相辅相成 在绒猴的空间行为中。目的3中的实验建立在这些结果的基础上，以记录海马的活动。 在相同的3D自然环境中自由移动的绒猴的神经元。通过整合头戴式， 无线眼球跟踪技术和视频跟踪的动物在空间中的位置，我们将阐述的作用 不同灵长类动物海马子区域的不同区域来进行探索和导航。

Project Summary. Human and nonhuman primates are highly visual animals that are predominantly active during the daylight hours. Yet our understanding of the neural mechanisms supporting spatial navigation is largely based on studies of nocturnal, burrowing rodents with poor vision. Indeed, studies of human and nonhuman primates have already demonstrated that spatial positions can be encoded in the hippocampus exclusively by visual inspection of a scene (i.e. spatial-view cells). At the same time, primate hippocampus also comprises populations of neurons that encode self-position in a scene during locomotion (i.e. place cells). Ultimately, primate representations of space must integrate these parallel threads of spatial information, but precisely how this occurs within the primate hippocampus is entirely unknown. Here we propose to address this fundamental question by leveraging several conceptual, technical and computational innovations to examine the neural basis of spatial representations in the hippocampus of marmoset monkeys. Aim 1 complements our previous work demonstrating canonical place cells in marmoset hippocampus during free-navigation to characterize whether neurons in this neural structure can also encode space through visual exploration of a scene. Aim 2 seeks to systematically characterize behavioral strategies in marmosets when searching for food in naturalistic 3-dimensional `forest' environments. Specifically, we will test how visual exploration and physical navigation of the landscape complement each other in marmoset spatial behavior. Experiments in Aim 3 build on these results to record the activity of hippocampal neurons of freely-moving marmosets in the same 3D naturalistic environments. By integrating head-mounted, wireless eye-tracking technology and video tracking of the animals position in space, we will explicate the role of different primate hippocampal subfields for exploration and navigation.