This study describes a task that combines random searching with goal directed navigation. The testing was conducted on a circular elevated open field (80 cm in diameter), with an unmarked target area (20 cm in diameter) in the center of 1 of the 4 quadrants. Whenever the rat entered the target area, the computerized tracking system released a pellet to a random point on the open field. Rats were able to learn the task under light and in total darkness, and on a stable or a rotating arena. Visual information was important in light, but idiothetic information became crucial in darkness. Learning of a new position was quicker under light than in total darkness on a rotating arena. The place preference task should make it possible to study place cells (PCs) when the rats use an allothetic (room frame) or idiothetic (arena frame) representation of space and to compare the behavioral response with the PCs' activity.

Institute of Physiology Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Behavioral evidence that segregation and representation are dissociable hippocampal functions

Operant behavior can be triggered by the position of the rat relative to objects rotating on an inaccessible platform

Understanding hippocampal activity by using purposeful behavior: place navigation induces place cell discharge in both task-relevant and task-irrelevant spatial reference frames