{"id":3255,"date":"2026-01-04T10:59:55","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:59:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/?p=3255"},"modified":"2026-01-04T10:59:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T00:59:55","slug":"how-locomotor-development-shapes-hippocampal-spatial-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/?p=3255","title":{"rendered":"How locomotor development shapes hippocampal spatial coding?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Marco P. Abrate, Laurenz Muessig, Francesca Cacucci, Joshua P. Bassett, Hui Min Tan, Thomas J. Wills, Caswell Barry. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.64898\/2025.12.30.696864v1\"><strong>From movement to cognitive maps: recurrent neural networks reveal how locomotor development shapes hippocampal spatial coding<\/strong><\/a>. bioRxiv 2025.12.30.696864; doi: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.64898\/2025.12.30.696864<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Abstract<br \/>\n&#8220;<strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">The hippocampus contains neurons whose firing correlates with an animal\u2019s location and orientation in space<\/span><\/strong>. Collectively, these neurons are held to support a cognitive map of the environment, enabling the recall of and navigation to specific locations. Although recent studies have characterised the timelines of <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">spatial neuron development<\/span><\/strong>, <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">no unifying mechanistic model has yet been proposed<\/span><\/strong>. Moreover, <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">the processes driving the emergence of spatial representations in the hippocampus remain unclear<\/span><\/strong> (Tan et al., 2017). Here, we combine computational analysis of postnatal locomotor development with a recurrent neural network (RNN) model of hippocampal function <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">to demonstrate how changes in movement statistics \u2013 and the resulting sensory experiences \u2013 shape the formation of spatial tuning<\/span><\/strong>. First, we identify distinct developmental stages in rat locomotion during open-field exploration using published experimental data. Then, we train shallow RNNs to predict upcoming visual stimuli from concurrent visual and vestibular inputs, exposing them to trajectories that reflect progressively maturing locomotor patterns. Our findings reveal that these changing movement statistics drive the sequential emergence of spatially tuned units, mirroring the developmental timeline observed in rats. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">The models generate testable predictions about how spatial tuning properties mature<\/span><\/strong> \u2013 predictions we confirm through analysis of hippocampal recordings. Critically, we demonstrate that replicating the specific statistics of developmental locomotion \u2013 rather than merely accelerating sensory change \u2013 is essential for the emergence of an allocentric spatial representation. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">These results establish a mechanistic link between embodied sensorimotor experience and the ontogeny of hippocampal spatial neurons<\/span><\/strong>, with significant implications for neurodevelopmental research and predictive models of navigational brain circuits.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Marco P. Abrate, Laurenz Muessig, Francesca Cacucci, Joshua P. Bassett, Hui Min Tan, Thomas J. Wills, Caswell Barry. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biorxiv.org\/content\/10.64898\/2025.12.30.696864v1\"><strong>From movement to cognitive maps: recurrent neural networks reveal how locomotor development shapes hippocampal spatial coding<\/strong><\/a>. bioRxiv 2025.12.30.696864; doi: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.64898\/2025.12.30.696864<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marco P. Abrate, Laurenz Muessig, Francesca Cacucci, Joshua P. Bassett, Hui Min Tan, Thomas J. Wills, Caswell Barry. From movement to cognitive maps: recurrent neural networks reveal how locomotor development shapes hippocampal spatial coding. bioRxiv 2025.12.30.696864; doi: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.64898\/2025.12.30.696864 Abstract &#8220;The hippocampus contains neurons whose firing correlates with an animal\u2019s location and orientation in space. Collectively, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[987,96],"tags":[1492,1162],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3256,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3255\/revisions\/3256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}