Figure 1.

Hippocampal principal cells that develop conjunctive what–where representations are behavior-selective cells. (A) Task scheme. Animals have to learn to associate contexts to items (scented pots) for reward. A 40-sec period of context exploration is allowed before items presentation. An item is considered “chosen” when the rat digs its pot searching for reward. (B) Average task performance accuracy during the first, middle, and last block of 30 trials. (*) P < 0.01 (t-test) when compared with chance performance (50% in this task). (C, left) Mean IP cell firing rates during sampling of the preferred and nonpreferred items in the same position before learning (left set of bars) and after learning (right sets of bars). (Other panels) Mean firing rates during the sampling of the rewarded and nonrewarded item are shown for the two types of IP cells (as labeled) separately and for P cells. (*) P < 0.01 (t-test). (D) Mean firing rates of IP and P cells on item samplings occurring preceding Go and NoGo responses before and after learning. (*) P < 0.01 (t-test).