The overdispersion in activity of place cells

The spontaneous discharge of place cells reflects the position of an animal in its environment. The firing rate is high inside a part of it, called the firing held, and low outside. It has been found experimentally that while the activity of place cells is highly reliable in position, it does not retain the same reliability in time. We present a mathematical model which is able to reproduce the experimental result. The model permits inferences about the neural mechanisms leading to the overdispersion in the activity of hippocampal place cells. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.