Event:

Animals can rapidly engage in goal-directed spatial behaviors in response to environmental threats, yet how alerting cues engage spatial representations remains largely unknown. In this talk, I will focus on how head-direction (HD) cells and place cells are dynamically modulated by both external stimuli and internal brain states. In the first part, I will show that thalamic HD neurons - key components of the brain’s navigation system - are recruited by alerting acoustic stimuli. Using juxtacellular and silicon probe recordings in awake mice, we find that thalamic HD cells, but not non-HD cells, respond selectively to alerting sounds, with responses tracking arousal and facial motion dynamics. These effects enhance directional coding, providing a mechanism for rapid directional processing in response to environmental threats. In the second part, I will present evidence that hippocampal place cell representations are reorganized during sleep in a manner that supports memory generalization, linking behavioral experience to flexible spatial coding. Together, these findings highlight how spatial representations are flexibly shaped by both salient external cues and internal states to support adaptive behavior.