Egocentric goal coding in dorsal medial striatum
Behavior is executed egocentrically — actions are directed relative to the body — yet the cognitive map is allocentric. We study how the dorsal medial striatum represents goals in an egocentric frame, extending our discovery of egocentric boundary cells in the same region.
The question
The dorsal medial striatum sits at the action-selection output of the egocentric–allocentric transformation circuit. Having shown that DMS contains egocentric boundary cells, we ask whether the same region encodes goals egocentrically — the direction to a navigational goal, expressed relative to the animal's current heading.
Approach
We take a cross-species, two-method approach. A completed study used one-photon calcium imaging to record dorsal medial striatum neurons in freely moving mice during goal-directed navigation; an active follow-up uses single-unit electrophysiology in rats. In both, we pair neural data with quantitative behavioral tracking to test for tuning to the egocentric direction of the goal.
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