Neural Mechanisms of Navigation Involving Interactions of Cortical and Subcortical Structures
J Neurophysiol 119: 2007–2029, 2018. First published February 14, 2018; doi:10.1152/jn.00498.2017. REVIEW Where Are You Going? The Neurobiology of Navigation Neural mechanisms of navigation involving interactions of cortical and subcortical structures James R. Hinman, Holger Dannenberg, Andrew S. Alexander, and Michael E. Hasselmo Center for Systems Neuroscience, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts Submitted 5 July 2017; accepted in final form 1 February 2018 Hinman JR, Dannenberg H, Alexander AS, Hasselmo ME. Neural mecha- nisms of navigation involving interactions of cortical and subcortical structures. J Neurophysiol 119: 2007–2029, 2018. First published February 14, 2018; doi: 10.1152/jn.00498.2017.—Animals must perform spatial navigation for a range of different behaviors, including selection of trajectories toward goal locations and foraging for food sources. To serve this function, a number of different brain regions play a role in coding different dimensions of sensory input important for spatial behavior, including the entorhinal cortex, the retrosplenial cortex, the hippocampus, and the medial septum. This article will review data concerning the coding of the spatial aspects of animal behavior, including location of the animal within an environment, the speed of movement, the trajectory of movement, the direction of the head in the environment, and the position of barriers and objects both relative to the animal’s head direction (egocentric) and relative to the layout of the environment (allocentric). The mechanisms for coding these important spatial representations are not yet fully understood but could involve mechanisms including integration of self-motion information or coding of location based on the angle of sensory features in the environment.
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