Convergent Science Network Podcast

This post-lecture interview was conducted during the BCBT Summerschool held at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, september 2010. 

Place cells, head direction cells, and grid cells have been found and studied in the hippocampus during the past decades. John Kubie (SUNY Downstate Medical Center, USA) is one of the early group of scientists who focused specifically on this brain area, and gives a brief history of the work he and others did on place cells. In Kubie's view, these cells hold information about certain places in an environment, as well as probably a sense of which environment an animal finds itself in, and what actions are appropriate given it. Together with Paul Verschure he discusses the build up of allocentric and egocentric models, navigation and path integration, and the role of sensory information in it.

About the lecturer
Associate Professor at the Department of Cell Biology of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, NY. USA. The Analysis of Hippocampal Place Cells is the principal focus of his investigation. A central question is how populations of cells contribute to an animal's perception of space.