Phase-tuned neuronal firing encodes human contextual representations for navigational goals
- Columbia University, United States
- University of California, Los Angeles, United States
Abstract
We previously demonstrated that the phase of oscillations modulates neural activity representing categorical information using human intracranial recordings and high-frequency activity from local field potentials (Watrous et al., 2015b). We extend these findings here using human single-neuron recordings during a navigation task. We identify neurons in the medial temporal lobe with firing-rate modulations for specific navigational goals, as well as for navigational planning and goal arrival. Going beyond this work, using a novel oscillation detection algorithm, we identify phase-locked neural firing that encodes information about a person's prospective navigational goal in the absence of firing rate changes. These results provide evidence for navigational planning and contextual accounts of human MTL function at the single-neuron level. More generally, our findings identify phase-coded neuronal firing as a component of the human neural code.
Data availability
The human single neuron recordings raw data can be obtained upon request from Joshua Jacobs (joshua.jacobs@columbia.edu). At this point, the raw data has not been made publicly available to ensure controlled access to the dataset and that the patients' anonymity is not compromised.
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Simultaneous electrophysiological recordings of ensembles of isolated neurons in rat medial prefrontal cortex and intermediate CA1 area of the hippocampus during a working memory taskPublicly available at CRCNS.org. - Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS033221)
- Itzhak Fried
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS084017)
- Itzhak Fried
National Institute of Mental Health (MH104606)
- Joshua Jacobs
National Science Foundation (DGE 16-44869)
- Salman E Qasim
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Timothy E Behrens, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Ethics
Human subjects: The Medical Institutional Review Board at the University of California-Los Angeles approved this study (IRB#10-000973) involving recordings from patients with drug-resistant epilepsy who provided informed consent to participate in research.
Version history
- Received: October 12, 2017
- Accepted: June 21, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 22, 2018 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: July 11, 2018 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2018, Watrous et al.
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.
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Phase-tuned neuronal firing encodes human contextual representations for navigational goals
eLife 7:e32554.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.32554
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