Bos, Jeroen J., Martin Vinck, Pietro Marchesi, Amos Keestra, Laura A. van Mourik-Donga, Jadin C. Jackson, Paul FMJ Verschure, and Cyriel MA Pennartz. “Multiplexing of Information about Self and Others in Hippocampal Ensembles.” Cell Reports 29, no. 12 (2019): 3859-3871.

In Brief
“Bos et al. study hippocampal coding of an external agent’s location using a minirobot and find no evidence of mirrorlike neurons coding location. They discover that CA1 firing patterns (especially interneurons) carry information about robot behavior and highlight the importance of controlling for confounds due to changes in animal position.”

Summary
“In addition to coding a subject’s location in space, the hippocampus has been suggested to code social information, including the spatial position of conspecifics. “Social place cells” have been reported for tasks in which an observer mimics the behavior of a demonstrator. We examine whether rat hippocampal neurons may encode the behavior of a minirobot, but without requiring the animal to mimic it. Rather than finding social place cells, we observe that robot behavioral patterns modulate place fields coding animal position. This modulation may be confounded by correlations between robot movement and changes in the animal’s position. Although rat position indeed significantly predicts robot behavior, we find that hippocampal ensembles code additional information about robot movement patterns. Fast-spiking interneurons are particularly informative about robot position and global behavior. In conclusion, when the animal’s own behavior is conditional on external agents, the hippocampus multiplexes information about self and others.“

The fig. is from Bos et al. 2019

Bos, Jeroen J., Martin Vinck, Pietro Marchesi, Amos Keestra, Laura A. van Mourik-Donga, Jadin C. Jackson, Paul FMJ Verschure, and Cyriel MA Pennartz. “Multiplexing of Information about Self and Others in Hippocampal Ensembles.” Cell Reports 29, no. 12 (2019): 3859-3871.