Nachum Ulanovsky: Neural codes for natural navigation in the hippocampal formation of bats
| When |
Mar 27, 2019
from 12:15 PM to 01:15 PM |
|---|---|
| Where | Institute of Biology I, Hauptstraße 1, 79104 Freiburg, Lecture Hall, 1st Floor |
| Contact Name | Ad Aertsen |
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Freiburg Neuroscience Lecture
Neural codes for natural navigation in the hippocampal formation of bats
Prof. Nachum Ulanovsky | Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Abstract
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 revealed 3D place cells, 3D head-directions cells, and 3D grid cells in the bat hippocampal formation. (ii) How are navigational goals represented in the brain ? We discovered a new kind of vectorial representation of spatial goals – whereby hippocampal neurons encode the direction and distance to a spatial goal. (iii) I will describe our recent discovery of “social place-cells” in the bat hippocampus – neurons that represent the position of other bats (conspecifics). (iv) Finally, I will describe ongoing work towards elucidating hippocampal neural codes in realistic, kilometer-scale environments – where we discovered an unexpected multi-scale coding of space. 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.
More about Nachum Ulanovsky and his research:
Weizmann Institute of Science