A latent attractors model of context selection in the dentate gyrus-hilus system

Primary neurons in all parts of the rodent hippocampus show location-specif ic patterns of activity called place fields, thus forming a distributed rep resentation of place. Paradoxically, environments with very similar sensory cues can produce distinct place representations. The origin of this contex t dependence is not known. In this paper, we speculate that the dentate gyr us-hilus (DGH) system, with its disynaptic recurrent connectivity plays a c entral role in creating context-dependent place representations. We show th at a simple system architecture can support distinct and consistent place r epresentations for similar environments. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.