Path Integration in Mammals and its Interaction With Visual Landmarks

Abstract

During locomotion, mammals update their position with respect to a fixed point of reference, such as their point of departure, by processing inertial cues, proprioceptive feedback and stored motor commands generated during locomotion. This so-called path integration system (dead reckoning) allows the animal to return to its home, or to a familiar feeding place, even when external cues are absent or novel. However, without the use of external cues, the path integration process leads to rapid accumulation of errors involving both the direction and distance of the goal. Therefore, even nocturnal species such as hamsters and mice rely more on previously learned visual references than on the path integration system when the two types of information are in conflict. Recent studies investigate the extent to which path integration and familiar visual cues cooperate to optimize the navigational performance.

Excitotoxic lesions centered on perirhinal cortex produce delay-dependent deficits in a test of spatial memory.

“…Interestingly, the performance of rats with lesions involving the hippocampal CA1 region was clearly different than that of rats with lesions that did not involve that region, in that only the former group were significantly impaired by a 360° within-trial rotation of the maze (see Figure 7). These data are consistent with the results of previous studies that suggest that the hippocampus processes the sort of inertial information (Matthews, Campbell, & Deadwyler, 1988;Sharp, Blair, Etkin, & Tzanetos, 1995;Wiener, Korshuno, Garcia, & Berthoz, 1995) that would be required for path integration processes (Benhamou & Poucet, 1996;Etienne, Maurer, & Seguinot, 1996;McNaughton et al, 1996;Wiener et al, 1995; for a review, see Whishaw, McKenna, & Maaswinkel. 1997) and suggests that, as a result of a deficit in this system, hippocampal lesioned rats may not have recognized that the rotation had returned them to their starting position.…”

Egocentric path integration models and their application to desert arthropods

“…Bisetzky, 1957;Görner, 1958;Hoffmann, 1985b;Wehner and Wehner, 1986;Müller and Wehner, 1988) but also mammals (e.g. Séguinot et al, 1993;Etienne et al, 1996;Séguinot et al, 1998) exhibit errors in determining the exact homing direction. In general, we have to distinguish between random errors and systematic errors during path integration.…”

“…Systematic errors play an important role, as the classical two-leg experiments (L-shaped angular turning tests) have shown in both mammals (e.g. Maurer and Séguinot, 1995;Etienne et al, 1996) and arthropods (e.g. Müller and Wehner, 1988;Bisch, 1999).…”

Sensory feedback in a bump attractor model of path integration

“…For instance, birds can utilize neural systems that sense the earth's magnetic field, orienting themselves geocentrically (Cochran et al, 2004;Wu and Dickman, 2012). This is in contrast to the systems studied in mammalian species, who are typically shown to use path integration (Etienne et al, 1996;McNaughton et al, 2006). Path integration models of spatial navigation assume mammals have knowledge of their direction and speed of motion, which networks of the brain can then integrate to encode the path of their idiothetic motion (Samsonovich and McNaughton, 1997).…”

“…Fortunately, path integration is not the sole navigational technique of the mammalian brain; landmarks detected by the sensory system help anchor and correct the integrated velocity signal (Fig. 1A) (Collett and Graham, 2004;Etienne et al, 1996;Solstad et al, 2008).…”