Place cell firing shows an inertia-like process
Place cells were recorded from five animals performing a shuttle task on a linear track in which reward was only available at one end of the journey. Although place fields during the journey itself were directional, place fields at the turn-around point were bidirectional. Place fields that were directional on full-length journeys became locally bidirectional when the animal turned around in the middle of the place field. This suggests that place cells show an inertia-like process in which, once they begin firing, they continue firing whatever trajectory the animal takes. This process would be useful for storing routes and sequences.
directional place cells hippocampus spatial reasoning cognitive maps