POSITIONAL FIRING PROPERTIES OF PERIRHINAL CORTEX NEURONS

NEURONAL activity in the perirhinal cortex was recorded while rats per formed a spatial task on a four arm radial maze. The maze was defined by proximal multisensory cues on the arm surfaces and distal complex v isual cues at the surround. During each recording session, rats were r un in three conditions: baseline, a condition in which proximal and di stal cues were manipulated, and a second baseline. Compared with the a ctivity of hippocampal neurons in the same paradigm, a much smaller pr oportion of perirhinal neurons exhibited spatial selectivity and perir hinal place fields were larger than hippocampal place fields. Although perirhinal place fields exhibited a high degree of spatial tuning and reliability within a condition, they were not stable across condition s. NeuroReport 9: 3013-3018 (C) 1998 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.