Abstract
The activity of dorsal striatal location and head direction neurons were recorded as rats performed a hippocampal-dependent spatial working memory task. Relative to previous descriptions of hippocampal fields, striatal fields appeared more dependent on the visual environment in which the maze was performed. Striatal head direction correlates were also shown to be dependent upon the visual context in a lit environment: The directional preferences rotated with the rotation of distal visual cue, and maze or rat rotations had no effect. However, when animals performed the maze in darkness, idiothetic information gained greater control over head direction preferences: Passive movement of the rat in darkness (but not in light) disrupted directional firing. During both light and dark trials, the same head direction preferences were observed. A special contribution of the dorsal striatum to navigation may be to facilitate an animal’s ability to switch between navigational strategies, thereby maintaining behavioral constancy in changing environments.
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This work was supported by NSF Grants IBN9514880 (S.J.Y.M.) and DGE9616182 (K.E.R.), and NIH Grants MH58755 (S.J.Y.M.) and MH11998 (B.G.C.). We thank James Canfield for comments and suggestions throughout this study, Stefan Leutgeb for invaluable programming contributions and comments on the manuscript, and Karen Burk, Rebecca Green, Annette Lavoie, and Wayne Pratt for much appreciated assistance with data acquisition and analysis.
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Mizumori, S.J.Y., Ragozzino, K.E. & Cooper, B.G. Location and head direction representation in the dorsal striatum of rats. Psychobiology 28, 441–462 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03332003
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03332003