O'Keefe's Theory: General Description
Evidence from single unit and lesion studies suggests that the hippocampal formation acts as a spatial map.
Place cells are cells that fire only when the rat is in a particular portion of its environment.
Place Cells and Navigation: Place cells have long been thought to provide a map to enable navigation.
EEG - Theta Rhythm: Place cell firing has a systematic phase relationship to the local EEG. When a rat on a linear track runs through its place field, the cell fires groups of spikes, with each successive group occuring at an earlier phase of the theta cycle.
The question remains as to how information in the place cell map could be read out in a useful way.
Prepared by Alex Guazzelli and Fernando Corbacho (aguazzel/corbacho@pollux.usc.edu)