Spatial representation and the architecture of the entorhinal cortex

It has recently been recognized that the entorhinal cortex has a crucial role in spatial representation and navigation. How the position of an animal is computed within the entorhinal circuitry remains to be determined, but the architectural organization of this brain area might provide some clues. Here, we review three organizational principles – recurrent connectivity, interlaminar connectivity and modular organization – and propose how each of them might contribute to the emergence and maintenance of positional representations in entorhinal neural networks.