We live in a dynamic world, but we often study navigation as if the world is static. So how do we flexibly adapt in the face of new, pivotal information? Stephanie Prince addresses just that question in her latest paper.
To do this, Steph developed a new behavioral paradigm in which we leverage a dynamic, virtual-reality environment to precisely control the introduction of new information while animal’s choices are evolving in a memory-based decision-making task.
In hippocampus, we found that new, pivotal information causes non-local representations of both possible goal locations to rapidly increase, simulating both possible outcomes. In prefrontal cortex we found that new, pivotal information causes choice codes to rapidly switch to represent the new choice. This shows for the first time that prospective codes are actively modulated by new task-relevant information.
Finally, we find that hippocampal representations of the new future goal increased more when animals needed to adapt their behavior more in response to the new information. This shows that the degree of adaptation needed is a key overlooked variable regulating prospective codes. These findings clarify long-standing debates about whether these codes steer behavior towards upcoming choices or represent all possible paths.
Steph pioneered this new take on prospective codes including this complex behavior. The paper would not have been possible without the help of Danielle Cushing. Link to the smart PDF: https://rdcu.be/enokS
Joshua Stewart wrote a great non-technical explainer here
This work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), The National Institutes of Health, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the McCamish Foundation.