Figure 6. Only attention to the fixed visuospatial environment leads to stable spatial representations.

A, long-term stability on days 1 and 3 during training in the visuospatial and olfactory tasks. Only animals that learned to attend to space (visuospatial group) displayed place field stability on Day 3. B–D, examples of rate maps from cells recorded in the visuospatial (B) and the olfactory groups (C and D) during training. B, on day 1 the depicted cell displays a place field with low coherence and stability. However, the same cell displays a highly stable place field on day 3 after the animal has learned to attend to space. C and D, examples of cells in the olfactory group where the fields become locked to the reward-associated odour (C) and the fields become highly unstable and unorganized (D). Red circle in the cartoon below each map indicates position of the reward. Purple square on top of each map indicates peak firing rate. Colour map next to panel B indicates how firing activity was represented in the maps. Adapted from Muzzio et al. 2009.