Processing...

Constant sub-second cycling between representations of possible futures in the hippocampus

Cell, 2020-01-30

Video Abstract (AI generated) Paper Preprint Cell

Cognitive faculties such as imagination, planning, and decision-making entail the ability to project into the future. Crucially, animal behavior in natural settings implies that the brain can generate representations of future scenarios not only quickly but also constantly over time, as external events continually unfold. Despite this insight, how the brain accomplishes this remains unknown. Here we report neural activity in the hippocampus encoding two future scenarios (two upcoming maze paths) in constant alternation at 8 Hz: one scenario per 8 Hz cycle (125 ms). We further found that the underlying cycling dynamic generalized across multiple hippocampal representations (location and direction) relevant to future behavior. These findings identify an extremely fast and regular dynamical process capable of representing future possibilities.