Poster: Hippocampal remapping involves competition between entorhinal inputs – SfN Tuesday Morning: 576.20

Authors: J. Dickinson, A. Weible, D. Rowland, C. Kentros

Place cells are recorded in CA1 and CA3 fields of the hippocampus. The major afferents to the hippocampus come from entorhinal cortex. When grid cells were first described in recordings from layer 2 of medial entorhinal cortex it was largely assumed that place cell patterns arose from through a summation of grid cell inputs.  Continue reading →

Poster: Passive Transport Disrupts Grid Cell Firing Patterns. Shawn Winter and Jeff Taube.

Both Grid Cells and Head Direction Cells are thought to be path integrators. That is, each cell type is thought to be driven as a function of the animal’s movement. For head-direction cells firing is thought to be driven by rotational movement; for grid cells a combination of rotation and translation. There are distinct sources of self-movement information: motor action plans, proprioception, and feedback from the environment. Winter and Taube sought to dissect these by removing “action plans” (and some proprioception) by comparing firing in these cell types during passive and active movement. Continue reading →

Ed Catmull’s lecture.

Each year SfN invites a prominent non-neuroscientist to speak in the series: Dialog Between Neuroscience and Society.  These talks are given on the first day of the meeting, in large, ballroom format. Today’s dialog was given by Ed Catmull, a trained mathematician-physicist whose career has been in developing computer-animation techniques and producing great pictures. Dr. Catmull is president of Pixar the animation component at Disney Pictures. Pixar made Toy Story, the first full-length computer-animated film. Toy Story was, of course, a huge creative and financial success.  It has been followed by a string of animated films remarkable in their complexity, creativity and financial returns. How was this done? How can a huge team work for years with one goal, to create a single creative product? What’s the magic formula?  Dr. Catmull suggested some answers in his lecture, “The Culture of Creativity“. Continue reading →

Friday, Nov 8.

I’ve come just come from  the annual meeting of the International Neuroethics Society, an SfN satellite meeting. Fascinating talks on fascinating topics.  Speakers and summaries here. The live video feed is over, but videos of the sessions appear to be available.   Continue reading →

I’ll be blogging at the Society for Neuroscience Annual meeting for the next few days. Expect a series of reports