Journal
CELL
Volume 180, Issue 3, Pages 552-+Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.014
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Funding
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Simons Collaboration for the Global Brain [521921, 542981]
- NIH [R01 MH090188, R01 MH105174]
- NSF NeuroNex award [DBI-1707398]
- Gatsby Charitable Foundation
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Cognitive faculties such as imagination, planning, and decision-making entail the ability to represent hypothetical experience. Crucially, animal behavior in natural settings implies that the brain can represent hypothetical future experience not only quickly but also constantly over time, as external events continually unfold. To determine how this is possible, we recorded neural activity in the hippocampus of rats navigating a maze with multiple spatial paths. We found neural activity encoding two possible future scenarios (two upcoming maze paths) in constant alternation at 8 Hz: one scenario per similar to 125-ms cycle. Further, we found that the underlying dynamics of cycling (both inter- and intra-cycle dynamics) generalized across qualitatively different representational correlates (location and direction). Notably, cycling occurred across moving behaviors, including during running. These findings identify a general dynamic process capable of quickly and continually representing hypothetical experience, including that of multiple possible futures.
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