Disarrangement and reorganization of the hippocampal functional connectivity during the spatial path adjustment of pigeons.

Background: The hippocampus plays an important role to support path planning and adjustment in goal-directed spatial navigation. While we still only have limited knowledge about how do the hippocampal neural activities, especially the functional connectivity patterns, change during the spatial path adjustment. In this study, we measured the behavioural indicators and local field potentials of the pigeon (Columba livia, male and female) during a goal-directed navigational task with the detour paradigm, exploring the changing patterns of the hippocampal functional network connectivity of the bird during the spatial path learning and adjustment.

Results: Our study demonstrates that the pigeons progressively learned to solve the path adjustment task after the preferred path is blocked suddenly. Behavioural results show that both the total duration and the path lengths pigeons completed the task during the phase of adjustment are significantly longer than those during the acquisition and recovery phases. Furthermore, neural results show that hippocampal functional connectivity selectively changed during path adjustment. Specifically, we identified depressed connectivity in lower bands (delta and theta) and elevated connectivity in higher bands (slow-gamma and fast-gamma).

Conclusions: These results feature both the behavioural response and neural representation of the avian spatial cognitive learning process, suggesting that the functional disarrangement and reorganization of the connectivity in the avian hippocampus during different phases may contribute to our further understanding of the potential mechanism of path learning and adjustment.