Figure 2.

Delocalized spiking in CA1 and mPFC contributes to prospective and retrospective decoding in each structure. A, To determine how CA1 and mPFC activity represented the location of the animal in the plus maze, we performed Bayesian decoding of position from CA1 and mPFC activity. The color bar indicates the likelihood of an animal occupying a maze location, with black showing the highest likelihood an animal occupies a specific position. CA1 and mPFC activity recorded in the start arm decoded future goal locations, prospective decoding. Similarly, CA1 and mPFC activity recorded in the goal arm decoded the past locations of the animal, retrospective decoding. B, During periods of both prospective and retrospective decoding, spikes from CA1 and mPFC units with firing fields outside the current location of the animal (red dot) indicated its future goal location during periods of prospective decoding and past starting location during periods of retrospective decoding. Each color in B illustrates the principal firing field of one unit and is not shared across the figure. C, D, CA1 units demonstrated more prospective and retrospective decoding than mPFC units (Mann–Whitney U test, prospective, U = 52 488, p < 0.05; retrospective, U = 56381, p < 0.05). Individual dots in C, D represent single trials; *p < 0.05, N = 446 trials.