Spatial representations in the primate hippocampus, and their functions in memory and navigation

Sep 17, 2018Progress in neurobiology

How spatial maps in the primate memory and navigation system support remembering and moving

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Abstract

Hippocampal neurons in primates respond to the location where a monkey is looking rather than just where it is located.

The spatial view representation in primates is allocentric, meaning it relates to external locations rather than the individual's position.
Hippocampal neurons engage in memory tasks that require recalling the location of objects and rewards in a scene.
This neural representation is involved in encoding and recalling episodic memories in primates, including humans.
The development of a fovea in primates may influence how these spatial representations are formed.
The findings suggest a link between visual processing in the primate brain and navigation in both real and virtual environments.

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Hippocampal spatial view neurons in primates respond to the place where a monkey is looking, with some modulation by place. In contrast, hippocampal neurons in rodents respond mainly to the place where the animal is located. We relate this difference to the development of a fovea in primates, and the highly developed primate visual system which enables identification of what is at the fovea, and a system for moving the eyes to view different parts of the environment. We show that the spatial view representation in primates is allocentric, and provide new animations using recorded neuronal activity to illustrate this. We also show that this spatial representation becomes engaged in tasks in which the location 'out there' in a scene of objects and rewards must be remembered. We show that this representation of space being viewed provides a framework for the encoding of episodic memory and the recall of these memories in primates including humans, with hippocampal neurons responding for example in a one-trial object / place recall task. These functions of the primate hippocampus in scene-related memory, provide a way for the primate hippocampus to contribute to actions in space and navigation. We consider in a formal model the mechanisms by which these different spatial representations may be formed given the presence of the primate fovea, and how these mechanisms may contribute to the representations found during navigation in a virtual environment.

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