Place cell activity in three-dimensional environments

Abstract

Single unit recordings were made while rats explored different 3D surfaces. Place fields tended to cluster around specific elements that were common to all environments (e.g., the food dispersers), regardless of their position within the vertical axis suggesting that the hippocampus does not encode space in a 3D fashion. The spatial representation is shaped by prominent components of the environment which trigger the activation of the same cells despite their location within the 3D space.