Figure 13.

Firing activity of a range of cells while traversing a narrow linear track in both directions. Top row: cell activity as recorded in animals [Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Neuroscience (Dombeck et al., 2010), copyright 2010]. Bottom row: cell activity as produced by our simulations. Left and right images depict activity while the agent moves to the right and left, respectively. In both, the experiment and the simulation, place fields cover the whole track and mostly are only active while the rat/camera faces a particular direction. Note that no simulated place fields are active at the very ends of the linear track, as the virtual animal is told to stop a specified distance before hitting any wall to simulate the extent of a physical body.