The hippocampus as a spatial map. Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat
Using extracellular single-unit recordings from the hippocampus of freely moving rats, O'Keefe and Dostrovsky observed that certain neurons fired selectively when the animal occupied particular locations or orientations within the environment. They interpreted these spatially tuned responses as preliminary evidence that the hippocampus functions as a spatial map of the animal's surroundings. This brief report introduced the concept of hippocampal 'place cells' and seeded the cognitive-map theory of hippocampal function.