Boundary vector cells in the goldfish central telencephalon encode spatial information

Lear Cohen, Ehud Vinepinsky, Opher Donchin, Ronen Segev

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Navigation is one of the most fundamental cognitive skills for the survival of fish, the largest vertebrate class, and almost all other animal classes. Space encoding in single neurons is a critical component of the neural basis of navigation. To study this fundamental cognitive component in fish, we recorded the activity of neurons in the central area of the goldfish telencephalon while the fish were freely navigating in a quasi-2D water tank embedded in a 3D environment. We found spatially modulated neurons with firing patterns that gradually decreased with the distance of the fish from a boundary in each cell’s preferred direction, resembling the boundary vector cells found in the mammalian subiculum. Many of these cells exhibited beta rhythm oscillations. This type of spatial representation in fish brains is unique among space-encoding cells in vertebrates and provides insights into spatial cognition in this lineage.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere3001747
JournalPLoS Biology
Volume21
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Apr 2023

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Neuroscience
  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Immunology and Microbiology
  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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