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Entorhinal-retrosplenial circuits for allocentric-egocentric transformation of boundary coding

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Nov 02, 2020 version files 125.21 MB

Abstract

Spatial navigation requires landmark coding from two perspectives, relying on viewpoint-invariant and self-referenced representations. The brain encodes information within each reference frame, but their interactions and functional dependency remains unclear. Here we investigate the relationship between neurons in rat retrosplenial cortex (RSC) and entorhinal cortex (MEC) that increase firing near boundaries of space. Border cells in RSC specifically encode walls, but not objects, and are sensitive to the animal’s direction to nearby borders. These egocentric representations are generated independent of visual or whisker sensation, but depend on inputs from MEC that contains allocentric spatial cells. Pharmaco- and optogenetic inhibition of MEC cells led to a disruption of border coding in RSC, but not vice versa, indicating allocentric-to-egocentric transformation. Finally, RSC border cells fire prospective to the animal’s next motion, unlike those in MEC, revealing the MEC-RSC pathway as an extended border coding circuit that implements coordinate transformation to guide navigation behavior.