The subiculum encodes environmental geometry

Abstract

Corners are a cardinal feature of many of the complex environmental geometries found in the natural world but the neural substrates that could underlie the perception of corners remain elusive. Here we show that the dorsal subiculum contains neurons that encode corners across environmental geometries in an allocentric reference frame. Corner cells changed their activity to reflect concave corner angles, wall height and the degree of wall intersection. A separate population of subicular neurons encoded convex corners. Both concave and convex corner cells were non-overlapping with subicular neurons that encoded environmental boundaries, suggesting that the subiculum contains the geometric information needed to re-construct the shape and layout of naturalistic spatial environments. One Sentence SummarySeparate neural populations in the subiculum encode concave and convex environmental corners.