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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2023.02.19.529130

Hippocampal replay facilitates the formation of entorhinal grid cells

Zhang, B.·Liu, J.
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Abstract

Entorhinal grid cells provide a spatial metric through hexagonally periodic firing, whereas hippocampal replay reactivates experience in compressed sequences; whether the two share a directional geometry is unknown. We recorded magnetoencephalography during a direction-resolved navigation task that yielded 1,800 navigation events per participant, allowing both to be estimated event-wise across the full 360{degrees}. Reverse and forward replay emerged early in each event, followed by a six-fold entorhinal code. Replay was anchored to the grid axes, with forward and reverse replay encoding opposite directions of each axis and together spanning the six-fold structure. In a continuous-attractor network, replay along the hexagonal axes produced higher gridness than movement-axis or no replay. Behaviourally, an early modulation of movement speed was followed by a two-fold modulation of trajectory deviation whose phase aligned to the hexagonal axes. These results link a single hexagonal geometry across replay, entorhinal coding, and behaviour.

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Zhang, B., Liu, J.. 2023-02-19. Hippocampal replay facilitates the formation of entorhinal grid cells. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.02.19.529130

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