Decision and navigation in mouse parietal cortex

Abstract
Data availability
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Abstract

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.

Data availability

Behavioral and two-photon imaging data have been deposited in Dryad Digital Repository and are available at doi: 10.5061/dryad.ht3564h.

The following data sets were generated

1. Krumin M
2. Lee JJ
3. Harris KD
4. Carandini M
(2018) Data from: Decision and navigation in mouse parietal cortex
Dryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.j1fd7.

https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ht3564h

Article and author information

Author details

Michael Krumin

UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7356-6994
Julie J Lee

UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7293-8538
Kenneth D Harris

Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-5930-6456
Matteo Carandini

UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

For correspondence
m.carandini@ucl.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4880-7682

Funding

Wellcome (109004)

Julie J Lee

H2020 European Research Council (CORTEX)

Matteo Carandini

Simons Foundation (325512)

Kenneth D Harris
Matteo Carandini

Wellcome (95668)

Kenneth D Harris
Matteo Carandini

Wellcome (95669)

Kenneth D Harris
Matteo Carandini

Wellcome (205093)

Kenneth D Harris
Matteo Carandini

Wellcome (108726)

Kenneth D Harris
Matteo Carandini

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 experimental procedures were conducted according to the UK Animals Scientific Procedures Act (1986). Experiments were performed at University College London, under a Project Licence (70/8021) released by the Home Office following appropriate ethics review.

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.