Yotaro Sueoka published a first-author paper in Nature Neuroscience on how the phenomenon of theta phase precession in the hippocampus is affected by a mismatch between an animal’s internal representation of where it is located in an environment and the spatial landmarks that provide external sensory input about its location. This work, in collaboration with the lab of Noah Cowan of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, used a novel virtual reality apparatus developed by the labs to control the rat’s perception of its movement speed relative to the landmarks and place this perception in conflict with the rat’s actual speed. During periods of maximal conflict, the firing of hippocampal neurons at a particular phase of the theta rhythm was disrupted. This phase of theta has been associated with new learning, suggesting that the spiking output of the network is depressed during the cue conflicts during the phase of theta in which new associations are learned between the internal and external sources of spatial location information, so as to reduce interference between the old associations and the new ones being learned.
See associated News & Views article:
Internal and external codes for location | Nature Neuroscience