Neural representation of human experimenters in the bat hippocampus

Here we conducted wireless electrophysiological recording of hippocampal neurons from Egyptian fruit bats in the presence of human experimenters. In flying bats, many neurons modulated their activity depending on the identity of the human at the landing target. In stationary bats, many neurons carried significant spatial information about the position and identity of humans traversing the environment. Our results reveal that hippocampal activity is robustly modulated by the presence, movement and identity of human experimenters. Snyder et al. report that hippocampal neurons in Egyptian fruit bats modulate their activity depending on the position and identity of human experimenters when bats are flying and encode experimenter position and identity when bats are stationary.