Nachum Ulanovsky
Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Neural basis of 3D goal-directed navigation in the hippocampal formation of bats
The work in our lab focuses on understanding the neural basis of spatial memory and spatial cognition – using bats as our animal model. In my talk I will present some of our recent studies, which explored the following questions: (i) How does the brain represent positions and directions in 3D ? A set of studies in bats revealed that 3D positions are represented isotropically. 3D head-directions are represented in toroidal, rather than spherical 3D coordinates – allowing the brain to solve the discontinuity and non-commutativity problems of 3D directions. (ii) How are navigational goals represented in the brain ? I will describe a new kind of vectorial representation of spatial goals, which we discovered in the bat hippocampal formation. (iii) I will also describe ongoing work towards elucidating hippocampal neural codes in realistic, kilometer-scale environments. (iv) Finally, I will describe our very recent discovery of bat hippocampal neurons that represent the position of other bats (conspecifics). Our long-term vision is to develop a "Natural Neuroscience" approach for studying the neural basis of behavior – tapping into the animal's natural behaviors in complex, large-scale, naturalistic settings.
References
1. Geva-Sagiv M, Yovel Y, Las L & Ulanovsky N, Spatial cognition in bats and rats: from sensory acquisition to multiscale maps and navigation, Nature Rev. Neurosci. 16, 94-108 (2015). PDF
2. Finkelstein A, Derdikman D, Rubin A, Foerster JN, Las L & Ulanovsky N, Three-dimensional head-direction coding in the bat brain, Nature 517, 159-164 (2015). PDF
3. Yartsev MM & Ulanovsky N, Representation of three-dimensional space in the hippocampus of flying bats. Science 340, 367-372 (2013). PDF