The hippocampus as a perceptual map

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How are distinct memories formed and used for behavior? To relate neuronal and behavioral discrimination during memory formation, we use in vivo 2-photon Ca2+ imaging and whole-cell recordings from hippocampal subregions in mice performing a spatial virtual-reality task. We find that both sub- and suprathreshold activities of dentate gyrus neurons robustly differentiate between spatial environments, while neuronal remapping in CA1 depends on the degree of difference between visual cues. Moreover, neuronal discrimination in CA1, but not in the dentate gyrus, reflects behavioral performance. Our results suggest that CA1 weights the decorrelated information from the dentate gyrus according to its relevance, thereby producing a “perceptual map” of memory representations that guides behavior.