Sensory and cellular determinants of place cells activation

In any given environment, a specific ensemble of cells in the hippocampus, called place cells, are active (each one coding for a specific location, their place field) among a larger population of silent neurons. This ensemble participates to the formation of a cognitive map, a mental representation of that environment which allows flexible navigation. Despite their fundamental role in navigation and memory, the mechanisms of place cells activation are not yet fully understood. At the network level, place cells integrate information from external sensory cues as well as self-motion cues that are difficult to disentangle in real environments. Further, the cellular mechanisms of place cells activation are difficult to study with extracellular recordings, which only capture the spiking output of neurons but not their synaptic inputs or intrinsic cellular properties. In this talk I will describe how virtual reality for rodents in combination with large-scale extracellular recordings or intracellular patch-clamp recordings can be used to gain insights into the determinants of place cells activation.