GPS of the Brain Discovers Mechanism of Memory

Remembering special places and finding the routes to a destination is encoded due to an area in the brain called “place cells” that functions as a GPS and navigation system.

Remembering special places and finding the routes to a destination is feasible due to an area in the brain that functions like a GPS and navigation system. It is due to this system that we land up in easier identification of destinations after having already used the path.

Specific cells in the brain region – the hippocampus that is responsible for these spatial perceptions and is activated in discrete positions of the environment, are called "place cells". But the exact mechanism of how these cells store and encode information regarding places is not clear.

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‘Remembering special places and finding the routes to a destination is encoded due to an area in the brain called “place cells” that functions like a GPS and navigation system, present in the hippocampus (responsible for spatial navigation & memory). This understanding of mechanisms of memory might help in the development of diagnosis and treatment strategies of brain disorders such as Alzheimer's type dementia, amnesia, and cognitive impairment.’

Hippocampus is a part of the brain region that is responsible for learning and memory, especially for encoding long-term memories. It consists of four regions: CA1, CA2, CA3, and CA4 along with an input region – dentate gyrus.

The place cells in the hippocampus encode spatial information using interchangeably two distinct information-processing mechanisms referred to as a rate code and a phase code, as discovered by a study at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Brain Science Institute (BSI), in collaboration with a research team at New York University (NYU).

These codes are analog to the number and spatial arrangement of bars in bar codes. They function along with parallel neural circuits and information processing mechanisms, depending on the complexity of the landmarks along the path.

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Spatial Navigation by Hippocampus

The team demonstrated the fundamental principles of information processing in the hippocampus by conducting two types of spatial exploration experiments. The mice were trained to run on a treadmill with a long belt and in a circular arena, both having a section empty & another section filled with small objects.

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Silicon probe electrodes were implanted to analyze the neural activity in the CA1, the subregion generating the main output of the hippocampus, and in CA3, a subregion of the hippocampus suspected of playing an important role in spatial memory formation.

Different neural circuits and information processing strategies were found depending on the environmental conditions and the results of both experiments were consistent. Rate code was utilized In the object-free environments whereas phase code was used in a complex, object-strewn environment.

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GPS of the Brain

The presentation highlights that the circuit using the rate code is more strongly associated with providing information about overall positioning and spatial perception, whereas the circuit using the phase code is more strongly associated with remembering the precise location of an object and spatial relationships.

The team also found that information regarding the simple environments from CA3 is primarily received by the superficial CA1 cells whereas deep CA1 cells are concerned with receiving information primarily from the entorhinal cortex in the complex environments.

"This study improves our understanding of how the hippocampus processes information, which is a critical step for understanding the general mechanisms of memory. Such basic level understanding will eventually help the development of technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders related to hippocampal injuries such as Alzheimer's type dementia, amnesia, and cognitive impairment, and might inspire the development of some AI", says Sebastien Royer, Ph.D., Principal investigator at KIST.

Source-Medindia