Sense of place

My lab studies the activity of single neurons in the hippocampus and in those regions that project to it, in order to understand what environmental information the cells use to form their map of space. We study rats and mice, and our collaborators extend those findings into studies in humans. Our experimental setup is shown below, in which a rat explores (searching for food) while the activity of hippocampal neurons is monitored.

Experimental setup for recording spatially responsive neurons. The plot at the top right shows the final data form, in which the activity of a neuron (its action potentials) are shown plotted at the place where the animal was when the cell fired. Th…

Experimental setup for recording spatially responsive neurons. The plot at the top right shows the final data form, in which the activity of a neuron (its action potentials) are shown plotted at the place where the animal was when the cell fired. This place cell has a "place field" in the North-East corner of the apparatus.

Below are shown typical recordings from each of the four main spatial cell types; a place cell, a head direction cell, a grid cell and a border cell.

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Relevant publications

  • Jeffery, KJ (2018) Cognitive representations of spatial location Brain and Neuroscience Advances 2:1-5.

  • Duvelle, É and Jeffery, KJ (2018) Social spaces: Place cells represent the locations of others. Current Biology, 28, R254-R277 doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.02.017 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ (2018) The hippocampus: From memory, to map, to memory map. Trends in Neurosciences series on Science & Society, 41(2), 64-66 pdf

  • Ismakov R, Barak O, Jeffery KJ, Derdikman D (2017) Grid cells store local positional information. Current Biology 27(15):2337-2343 doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.034 pdf

  • Grieves R and Jeffery, KJ (2017) The representation of space in the brain. Behavioural Processes 135:113-131. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2016.12.012. pdf

  • Marozzi E, Ginzberg L-L, Alenda A, Jeffery KJ (2015) Purely translational realignment in grid cells following non-metric context change. Cerebral Cortex, 25(11):4619-27 doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhv120 pdf

  • Wilson JJ, Harding E, Fortier M, James B, Donnett M, Kerslake A, O'Leary A, Zhang N, Jeffery KJ (2015) Spatial learning by mice in three dimensions. Behavioral Brain Research 289:125-132 doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2015.04.035 pdf

  • Carpenter F, Manson D, Jeffery KJ, Burgess N, Barry C (2015) Grid cells form a global representation of connected environments. Current Biology, 25(9): 1176-1182 pdf supp

  • Spiers HJ, Hayman RM, Jovalekic A, Marozzi E and Jeffery KJ (2013) Place field repetition and purely local remapping in a multi-compartment environment. Cerebral Cortex, 25(1):10-25.doi: 10.1093/cercor/bht198 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ (2013) Neural odometry: The discrete charm of the entorhinal cortex. Current Biology, 23(5)  R204 - R206 pdf

  • Marozzi, E and Jeffery, KJ (2012) Place, space and memory cells. Current Biology 22(22) R940-R942 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ (2010) Theoretical accounts of spatial learning - a neurobiological view (commentary on Pearce 2009). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 63(9):1683-99 pdf

  • Hayman, R and Jeffery, K (2008) How heterogeneous place cell responding arises from homogeneous grids - a contextual gating hypothesis. Hippocampus, 18:1301-13 pdf

  • Hayman, R, Donnett, JG and Jeffery, KJ (2008) The fuzzy-boundary arena - A method for constraining an animal’s range in spatial experiments without using walls. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 167(2):184-90 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ (2007) Self-localization and the entorhinal-hippocampal system. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 17(6):684-691 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ (2007) Hippocampus and its interactions within the medial temporal lobe. Hippocampus, 17(9):693-6 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ (2007) Integration of the sensory inputs to place cells: what, where, why and how. Hippocampus,17(9):775-85 pdf

  • Barry, C, Hayman, R, Burgess, N, Jeffery, KJ (2007) Experience-dependent rescaling of entorhinal grids. Nature Neuroscience, 10(6): 282-284 pdf

  • Anderson, MI, Killing, S, Morris, C, O’Donoghue, A, Onyiagha, DK, Stevenson, R, Verriotis, M, Jeffery, KJ (2006) Behavioral correlates of the population coding of spatial context. Hippocampus, 16: 730-742 pdf

  • Barry, C, Lever, C, Hayman, R, Hartley, T, Burton, S, O’Keefe, J, Jeffery, K and Burgess, N (2006) The boundary vector cell model of place cell firing and spatial memory. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 17(1-2):71-97 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ and Burgess, N (2006) A metric for the cognitive map - found at last? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(1):1-3 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ and Hayman, R (2004) Plasticity of the hippocampal place cell representation. Reviews in the Neurosciences,15(5):309-31 pdf

  • Chakraborty, S, Anderson, MI, Chaudhry, A, Mumford, J and Jeffery, KJ (2004) Context-independent directional cue learning by hippocampal place cells. European Journal of Neuroscience, 20(1): 281-292 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ, Anderson, MI, Hayman, R and Chakraborty, S (2004) A proposed architecture for the neural representation of spatial context. Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews, 28: 201-218 pdf

  • Etienne, AS and Jeffery, KJ (2004) Path integration in mammals. Hippocampus, 14: 180-192 pdf

  • Hayman, R, Chakraborty, S, Anderson, MI and Jeffery, KJ (2003) Context-specific acquisition of location discrimination by hippocampal place cells. European Journal of Neuroscience,18: 2825-2834. pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ and Anderson, MI (2003) Dissociation of the geometric and contextual influences on place cells. Hippocampus, 13: 868-872 pdf

  • Anderson, MI and Jeffery, KJ (2003) Heterogeneous modulation of place cell firing by changes in context. Journal of Neuroscience, 23: 8827-8835 pdf

  • Jeffery, KJ, Gilbert, A, Burton, S and Strudwick, A (2003) Preserved performance in a hippocampal dependent spatial task despite complete place cell remapping. Hippocampus, 13: 175-189 pdf