Neurons in the Postrhinal Cortex Encode Nonspatial Context During Visual Biconditional Discrimination

Abstract

Representation of the context in which events occur is essential for episodic memory. Yet context is also important for other cognitive processes including, for example, making decisions, sequencing behavior, and associative learning. The rodent postrhinal cortex and its primate homolog, the parahippocampal cortex, are thought to preferentially process visuospatial information in order to represent the spatial features of contexts and scenes. An open question, however, is whether the postrhinal cortex is also involved in representing non-spatial contexts. Here, we used electrophysiology in behaving rats to show that postrhinal contextual representations extend to the non-spatial domain. Based on the pattern of results, we suggest that postrhinal representations of context, whether spatial or nonspatial, behave like occasion setters by modulating the meaning of other items in the environment.