Abstract
Place cell representations are assumed to underpin a cognitive map of our environment, and be crucial for our representations of episodic memory, which are hippocampal dependent and utilise spatial information. However, evidence from lesions of the cholinergic system in rodents suggests that there are dissociable types of hippocampal dependent memory, depending on the reliance on cholinergic input. This dissociation might relate to differential effects of the cholinergic lesion on place cell functions. Recently we have replicated this result in an apparatus designed to give increased statistical power and reduced animal numbers, focused on the 3Rs, by allowing repeated testing of episodic memories within a single session. We have also shown that this repeated testing of episodic memory fails in an apparatus where place cells are known not to differentiate the contexts in which testing occurs. However, we have shown that when the testing is once again spaced out, animals are able to perform normally despite the place cell representing the environments similarly. We therefore have increasing evidence that behaviour does not always follow place cell activity. Place cells are, perhaps, necessary only for certain types of hippocampal dependent memory.
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