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Neuronal Implementation of Hippocampal-Mediated Spatial Behavior: A Comparative Evolutionary Perspective
Bowling Green State University The hippocampal formation (HF) of mammals and birds plays a strikingly similar role in the representation of space. This evolutionarily conserved property, however, belies the contrasting spatial ecology of animals such as rats and homing pigeons, differing spatial ecologies that should have promoted the evolution of group-specific adaptations to the HF representation of space. However, the spatial response properties of pigeon and rat HF neurons reveal surprising similarity in the contribution of position, direction, and trajectory toward explaining spatial variation in firing rate. By contrast, the asymmetrical distribution of neuronal response properties in the left and right HF of homing pigeons, but not rats, indicates a difference in network organization. The authors propose that hippocampal evolution may be characterized by inertia with respect to changes in the basic spatial elements that determine the response properties of neurons but considerable plasticity in how the neuronal response elements are organized into functional networks.
Key Words: grid cells place cells animal navigation hippocampus
Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, Vol. 5, No. 2,
80-91 (2006) This article has been cited by other articles:
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