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Out just before the new year. An overdue look at retrosplenial (RSC) coding of context. We find many RSC single units remap their spatial firing between contexts. We also find that many RSC neurons show a persistent rate code specific to each context. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa386
RSC spatial coding is sloppier than Hippocampal spatial coding. Nonetheless, we find that RSC firing patterns are more reliable between visits to the same context than between different contexts (cell 1 and 2). Although some cells appeared insensitive to context change (cell 3)
At the same time, many RSC cells also encoded context in terms of persistent changes in firing rate. We saw this in neurons with and without clear spatial coding.
We modelled the influence of space, context, and behavioral variables on RSC firing and saw that most neurons encoded 2 or 3 different variables (pie chart). The context rate code persisted despite large changes in firing rate related to behaviors such as running speed.
See paper for additional tests of spatial decoding between visits to the same context (yes) and different contexts (less yes), as well as the ability to decode current context (very yes). None of this possible without @annaserrichio and @dms248. More to come!
