美国哥伦比亚大学Joshua Jacobs课题组的一项最新研究发现，记忆检索调控人类内嗅皮层单个神经元的空间调节。相关论文2019年11月11日在线发表于《自然—神经科学》。

通过记录执行虚拟现实对象与位置记忆任务的神经外科患者的单神经元活动，研究人员检测了空间调节中与记忆有关的变化。研究人员鉴定了具有活动性的“记忆跟踪细胞”，其在空间上已调整到参与者希望记住的特定对象的检索位置。内嗅皮层中的记忆追踪细胞专门通过记忆特定的速率码对不同记忆的可分辨特征进行编码。这些发现表明，人类内嗅皮层中的单个神经元会改变其空间调节，从而针对相关的记忆进行检索。

据了解，内侧颞叶对于空间导航和记忆均至关重要。尽管内侧颞叶中的单个神经元在导航期间会激活以表示环境中的位置，但这种空间调整与涉及那些位置的事件的记忆的关系仍不清楚。

附：英文原文

Title: Memory retrieval modulates spatial tuning of single neurons in the human entorhinal cortex

Author: Salman E. Qasim, Jonathan Miller, Cory S. Inman, Robert E. Gross, Jon T. Willie, Bradley Lega, Jui-Jui Lin, Ashwini Sharan, Chengyuan Wu, Michael R. Sperling, Sameer A. Sheth, Guy M. McKhann, Elliot H. Smith, Catherine Schevon, Joel M. Stein, Joshua Jacobs

Issue&Volume: 2019-11-11

Abstract: The medial temporal lobe is critical for both spatial navigation and memory. Although single neurons in the medial temporal lobe activate to represent locations in the environment during navigation, how this spatial tuning relates to memory for events involving those locations remains unclear. We examined memory-related changes in spatial tuning by recording single-neuron activity from neurosurgical patients performing a virtual-reality object–location memory task. We identified ‘memory-trace cells’ with activity that was spatially tuned to the retrieved location of the specific object that participants were cued to remember. Memory-trace cells in the entorhinal cortex, in particular, encoded discriminable representations of different memories through a memory-specific rate code. These findings indicate that single neurons in the human entorhinal cortex change their spatial tuning to target relevant memories for retrieval.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-019-0523-z

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-019-0523-z