Medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) grid cells fire at regular spatial intervals and project to the hippocampus, where place cells are active in spatially restricted locations. One feature of the grid population is the increase in grid spatial scale along the dorsal-ventral MEC axis. However, the difficulty in perturbing grid scale without impacting the properties of other functionally defined MEC cell types has obscured how grid scale influences hippocampal coding and spatial memory. Here we use a targeted viral approach to knock out HCN1 channels selectively in MEC, causing the grid scale to expand while leaving other MEC spatial and velocity signals intact. Grid scale expansion resulted in place scale expansion in fields located far from environmental boundaries, reduced long-term place field stability and impaired spatial learning. These observations, combined with simulations of a grid-to-place cell model and position decoding of place cells, illuminate how grid scale impacts place coding and spatial memory.

中文翻译：

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网格比例尺可驱动位置图的比例尺和长期稳定性。

内侧内嗅皮层（MEC）网格细胞以规则的空间间隔发射，并投射到海马体，在该海马体中，细胞在空间受限的位置活跃。网格人口的一个特征是沿背腹MEC轴网格空间比例的增加。但是，在不影响其他功能定义的MEC细胞类型的属性的情况下扰动网格规模的困难已经掩盖了网格规模如何影响海马编码和空间记忆。在这里，我们使用针对性的病毒方法选择性地敲除MEC中的HCN1通道，使网格规模扩大，同时保持其他MEC空间和速度信号不变。网格规模的扩展导致远离环境边界的领域中场所规模的扩展，长期场所场稳定性的降低以及空间学习的削弱。