# Retrosplenial Circuits Underlying Landmark Stability

> **NIH NIH F30** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE · 2024 · $43,634

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
 Vision is key to spatial navigation, because visual landmarks guide us through our everyday lives.
However, some landmarks become unreliable because they shift their location over time. Recent research
suggests an area of the brain known as the retrosplenial cortex processes landmarks and evaluates their
stability1. The retrosplenial cortex lies at a nexus between the hippocampal formation—a structure critical for
navigation, learning, and memory—and the visual cortex. The anatomical and functional connections have
suggested retrosplenial cortex is a site of visuospatial processing for some time2. And in fact, patients with
damage to RSC have difficulty utilizing landmarks to navigate through familiar environments, learning new
routes, and performing visual memory tasks3. But only recently have “place” cells been discovered in mouse
retrosplenial cortex, which encode the animal’s position in the world4. Our preliminary data suggest place cells
can be seen while an animal runs through a visual, virtual-reality track. We hypothesized that these place
representations may be strongly influenced by the movement of local landmarks, thus encoding both space
and landmark stability. This proposal lays out a strategy for testing this hypothesis using in vivo two-photon
calcium imaging and immersive virtual reality environments. First the proposal aims to fully characterize the
visual properties of retrosplenial “place” cells. Second, the proposal aims to test whether areas of high
landmark instability are encoded by fewer place fields. Finally, the proposal focuses on the moment a landmark
begins moving to see if the neural circuits show signs of becoming plastic. Scientists have long been interested
in how the brain enables spatial navigation. Not only is spatial navigation essential to daily life, but the neural
circuits involved overlap significantly with brain regions that process learning and memory. If successful, this
study will generate insight into the neural circuits of navigation and the essential contribution of visual landmark
processing. These results will add basic knowledge into how these circuits function in health and why they are
vulnerable to diseases such as neurodegeneration and stroke. The project will also inform the scientific and
medical communities on the proper design of immersive sensory interfaces for behavioral assessment in
animals and potentially rehabilitative therapies in humans.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10830489
- **Project number:** 5F30EY029589-06
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE
- **Principal Investigator:** Dhruba Banerjee
- **Activity code:** F30 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $43,634
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-04-01 → 2025-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10830489

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10830489, Retrosplenial Circuits Underlying Landmark Stability (5F30EY029589-06). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10830489. Licensed CC0.

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