TY - JOUR TI - Decision and navigation in mouse parietal cortex AU - Krumin, Michael AU - Lee, Julie J AU - Harris, Kenneth D AU - Carandini, Matteo A2 - Gold, Joshua I VL - 7 PY - 2018 DA - 2018/11/23 SP - e42583 C1 - eLife 2018;7:e42583 DO - 10.7554/eLife.42583 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42583 AB - Posterior parietal cortex (PPC) has been implicated in navigation, in the control of movement, and in visually-guided decisions. To relate these views, we measured activity in PPC while mice performed a virtual navigation task driven by visual decisions. PPC neurons were selective for specific combinations of the animal's spatial position and heading angle. This selectivity closely predicted both the activity of individual PPC neurons, and the arrangement of their collective firing patterns in choice-selective sequences. These sequences reflected PPC encoding of the animal’s navigation trajectory. Using decision as a predictor instead of heading yielded worse fits, and using it in addition to heading only slightly improved the fits. Alternative models based on visual or motor variables were inferior. We conclude that when mice use vision to choose their trajectories, a large fraction of parietal cortex activity can be predicted from simple attributes such as spatial position and heading. KW - cortex KW - navigation KW - decision KW - visual processing JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -