The Knierim Lab of MBI, in collaboration with the Locomotion in Mechanical and Biological Systems Lab of Noah Cowan of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, published a study in Nature Neuroscience showing that the update gain of the rat’s path integration system can be controlled and calibrated by purely optic flow cues. 

Using a virtual reality environment, principles from control theory, and neurophysiological recordings from the hippocampus, primary authors Manu Madhav and Ravikrishnan Jayakumar and their colleagues showed that they could control the rate at which hippocampal place cells update the rat’s internal representation of its location in an environment by integrating velocity cues in the absence of visual landmarks. 

This work was partially supported by a Discovery Grant from the JHU Provost’s Office and by a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship from the JHU Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute.

Control and recalibration of path integration in place cells using optic flow | Nature Neuroscience