Phasic and tonic neuron ensemble codes for stimulus-environment conjunctions in the lateral entorhinal cortex

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Abstract

The lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) is thought to bind sensory events with the environment where they took place. To compare the relative influence of transient events and temporally stable environmental stimuli on the firing of LEC cells, we recorded neuron spiking patterns in the region during blocks of a trace eyeblink conditioning paradigm performed in two environments and with different conditioning stimuli. Firing rates of some neurons were phasically selective for conditioned stimuli in a way that depended on which room the rat was in; nearly all neurons were tonically selective for environments in a way that depended on which stimuli had been presented in those environments. As rats moved from one environment to another, tonic neuron ensemble activity exhibited prospective information about the conditioned stimulus associated with the environment. Thus, the LEC formed phasic and tonic codes for event-environment associations, thereby accurately differentiating multiple experiences with overlapping features.

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Maryna Pilkiw

Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1200-1708
Nathan Insel

Department of Psychology, University of Montana, Missoula, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Younghua Cui

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Caitlin Finney

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Mark D Morrissey

Department of Psychology, University or Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Kaori Takehara-Nishiuchi

Department of Cell and Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

For correspondence
takehara@psych.utoronto.ca

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7282-7838

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2015-05458)

Kaori Takehara-Nishiuchi

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-133693)

Kaori Takehara-Nishiuchi

Canada Foundation for Innovation (25026)

Kaori Takehara-Nishiuchi

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (396157093)

Maryna Pilkiw

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All surgical and experimental procedures were approved by the Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of Toronto (protocol number: 20011400).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.