Heterogeneity in hippocampal place coding

The discovery of place cells provided fundamental insight into the neural basis by which the hippocampus encodes spatial memories and supports navigation and prompted the development of computational models to explain the emergence of their spatial selectively. Many such works posit that input from entorhinal grid cells is critical to the formation of place fields, a prediction that has received mixed experimental support. Potentially reconciling seemingly conflicting findings is recent work indicating that subpopulations of pyramidal neurons are functionally distinct and may be driven to varying degrees by different inputs. Additionally, new studies have demonstrated that hippocampal principal neurons encode a myriad of features extending beyond current position. Here, we highlight recent evidence for how extensive heterogeneity in connectivity and genetic expression could interact with membrane biophysics to enable place cells to encode a diverse range of stimuli. These recent findings highlight the need for more computational models that integrate these heterogeneous features of hippocampal principal neurons.