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Robust path integration in the entorhinal grid cell system with hippocampal feed-back

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Abstract

Animals are able to update their knowledge about their current position solely by integrating the speed and the direction of their movement, which is known as path integration. Recent discoveries suggest that grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex might perform some of the essential underlying computations of path integration. However, a major concern over path integration is that as the measurement of speed and direction is inaccurate, the representation of the position will become increasingly unreliable. In this paper, we study how allothetic inputs can be used to continually correct the accumulating error in the path integrator system. We set up the model of a mobile agent equipped with the entorhinal representation of idiothetic (grid cell) and allothetic (visual cells) information and simulated its place learning in a virtual environment. Due to competitive learning, a robust hippocampal place code emerges rapidly in the model. At the same time, the hippocampo-entorhinal feed-back connections are modified via Hebbian learning in order to allow hippocampal place cells to influence the attractor dynamics in the entorhinal cortex. We show that the continuous feed-back from the integrated hippocampal place representation is able to stabilize the grid cell code.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biophysics, KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Konkoly-Thegeút 29 – 33, 1121, Budapest, Hungary

    Dávid Samu, Péter Erős, Balázs Ujfalussy & Tamás Kiss

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  1. Dávid Samu
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  2. Péter Erős
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  3. Balázs Ujfalussy
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  4. Tamás Kiss
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Correspondence to Tamás Kiss.

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This research was supported by the EU Framework 6 ICEA project (IST-4-027819-IP).

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Samu, D., Erős, P., Ujfalussy, B. et al. Robust path integration in the entorhinal grid cell system with hippocampal feed-back. Biol Cybern 101, 19–34 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-009-0311-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-009-0311-z

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