Gene

Retrosplenial cortex

Neuroscience

Biology

Statistics

Working memory

Hippocampal formation

Cognition

Receptive field

Cognitive map

ENCODE

Sensory system

Spatial cognition

Biochemistry

Coding (social sciences)

Computer science

Spatial memory

Spatial analysis

Psychology

Mathematics

Geography

Hippocampus

Remote sensing

Neural coding

Encoding (memory)

Place cell

Nature reviews. Neuroscience

Several types of neurons involved in spatial navigation and memory encode the distance and direction (that is, the vector) between an agent and items in its environment. Such vectorial information provides a powerful basis for spatial cognition by representing the geometric relationships between the self and the external world. Here, we review the explicit encoding of vectorial information by neurons in and around the hippocampal formation, far from the sensory periphery. The parahippocampal, retrosplenial and parietal cortices, as well as the hippocampal formation and striatum, provide a plethora of examples of vector coding at the single neuron level. We provide a functional taxonomy of cells with vectorial receptive fields as reported in experiments and proposed in theoretical work. The responses of these neurons may provide the fundamental neural basis for the (bottom-up) representation of environmental layout and (top-down) memory-guided generation of visuospatial imagery and navigational planning. A number of spatially selective neurons that encode an animal’s distance and direction from environmental features have been proposed by theoretical studies and experimentally identified. Andrej Bicanski and Neil Burgess summarize our current understanding of vector coding cells and describe their contribution to spatial cognition.

Neuronal vector coding in spatial cognition