Changes in spatial self-consciousness elicit grid cell-like representation in the entorhinal cortex.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America March 19, 2024 Hyuk-June Moon, Louis Albert, Emanuela De Falco et al. 9 citations
Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, which encode location in space using environmental and bodily cues, also respond to illusory shifts in self-location caused by multisensory bodily stimulation, even without actual movement or visual navigation. In this fMRI study, participants experienced controlled illusory forward drifts in self-location through visuo-tactile stimulation while their visual viewpoint remained fixed. The entorhinal cortex showed grid cell-like representations that correlated with the magnitude of the perceived self-location and had the same grid orientation as during conventional virtual navigation. This indicates that the same neural representation is recruited for navigation based on environmental cues and for self-location changes driven by bodily signals.