Distance and position coding in the median entorhinal cortex

Animals use sensory information embedded in the hippocampus to generate a spatial representation of the environment, which allows them to navigate it correctly. This is made possible thanks to neurons having the ability to activate when the animal is in a particular position in space. Among them, we find the place cells of the hippocampus and the grid cells of the medial entorhinal cortex, a region projecting to the hippocampus. These cells can adopt two types of coding: distance (at the same distance from the starting point of navigation) or position (at the same position whatever the starting point).

 

The objective of the internship is to determine whether, like place cells, grid cells can switch between distance and position coding depending on the richness of cues in their environment. Electrophysiological recordings from the medial entorhinal cortex in head-fixed mice navigating in a virtual environment will also make it possible to study the same problem in other cells of this brain region such as border, head direction or speed cells.