Ribeiro Rodrigues, Fabio; (2019) Postnatal development and functional connectivity of the subiculum. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The ability to navigate through an environment and build mental representations of the space we visit, is an essential skill for many living creatures. In the hippocampus, space is represented through the activity of different spatial cell types, such as place cells, head-direction cells, and grid cells. In young animals, spatial cell types emerge at different ages: head-direction cells emerge in adult-like form at postnatal day (P) 16, but can be recorded before this age; grid cells emerge abruptly at P21; and place cells can first be recorded at age P16, but they gradually improve their firing characteristics. An also important spatial cell type, but often not talked about, are boundary encoding neurons in subiculum. Their physiology in the adult is well understood, but not much is known about their early postnatal features and how boundary information affects the firing of other spatial cell types. The work in this thesis aims to understand the postnatal development of subicular Boundary-Vector Cells (BVCs) as well as their functional relationship with entorhinal grid cells. The work here presented demonstrates that BVCs can be recorded from as early as P16, and like place cells, this spatial cell type gradually improves its firing characteristics until the animal reaches adulthood.

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