A large variety of spatial representations implied in rodent navigation could arise robustly and rapidly from inputs with a weak spatial structure, by an interaction of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic plasticity.
Mathematical modeling suggests that grid cells in the rodent brain use fundamental principles of number theory to maximize the efficiency of spatial mapping, enabling animals to accurately encode their location with as few neurons as possible.
Dementia-related tau pathology reduces speed encoding in the medial entorhinal cortex and is associated with reduced grid cell function, whilst head direction tuning remains intact.
Grid cells lose their hexagonality during hippocampal inactivation, but maintain temporal and spatial synchrony between pairs of cells, implying that hippocampus does not determine phase relations between grid cells.
Computational modeling of the brain’s navigation system reveals that place cells can drive the formation of hexagonal patterns experimentally observed in grid cells activity.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging performed while people imagined directions from stationary viewpoints supports theories suggesting that spatially tuned cells such as grid cells underlie mental simulation for future thinking.
A computational model for the formation of neural networks of grid cells in virtual bats suggests that the highly ordered networks presumed to support spatial navigation in two dimensions cannot be routinely established in three-dimensional space.
A very large number of place-field maps can be robustly learned by association of external cues with the grid-driven response, however plasticity in the grid-cell inputs renders the place-cell responses volatile.
