The cerebellum promotes sequential foraging strategies and contributes to the directional modulation of hippocampal place cells

Lu Zhang; Julien Fournier; Mehdi Fallahnezhad; Anne-Lise Paradis; Christelle Rochefort; Laure Rondi-Reig

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106200

The cerebellum promotes sequential foraging strategies and contributes to the directional modulation of hippocampal place cells

iScience. 2023 Feb 15;26(3):106200. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106200. eCollection 2023 Mar 17.

Authors

Lu Zhang¹, Julien Fournier¹, Mehdi Fallahnezhad¹, Anne-Lise Paradis¹, Christelle Rochefort¹, Laure Rondi-Reig¹

Affiliation

¹ Neuroscience Paris-Seine - Institut de biologie Paris-Seine, Sorbonne Université, INSERM, CNRS, Paris, France.

Abstract

The cerebellum contributes to goal-directed navigation abilities and place coding in the hippocampus. Here we investigated its contribution to foraging strategies. We recorded hippocampal neurons in mice with impaired PKC-dependent cerebellar functions (L7-PKCI) and in their littermate controls while they performed a task where they were rewarded for visiting a subset of hidden locations. We found that L7-PKCI and control mice developed different foraging strategies: while control mice repeated spatial sequences to maximize their rewards, L7-PKCI mice persisted to use a random foraging strategy. Sequential foraging was associated with more place cells exhibiting theta-phase precession and theta rate modulation. Recording in the dark showed that PKC-dependent cerebellar functions controlled how self-motion cues contribute to the selectivity of place cells to both position and direction. Thus, the cerebellum contributes to the development of optimal sequential paths during foraging, possibly by controlling how self-motion and theta signals contribute to place cell coding.

Keywords: Behavioral neuroscience; Biological sciences; Neuroscience.