Phase precession

Phase precession is a neurophysiological process in which the time of firing of action potentials by individual neurons occurs progressively earlier in relation to the phase of the local field potential oscillation with each successive cycle. In place cells, a type of neuron found in the hippocampal region of the brain, phase precession is believed to play a major role in the neural coding of information. John O'Keefe, who later shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery that place cells help form a "map" of the body's position in space, co-discovered phase precession with Michael Recce in 1993. Place cell Pyramidal cells in the hippocampus called place cells play a significant role in self-location during movement over short distances. As a rat moves along a path, individual place cells fire action potentials at an increased rate at particular positions along the path, termed "place fields". Each place cell's maximum firing rate - with action potentials occurring in rapid bursts - occurs at the position encoded by that cell; and that cell fires only occasionally when the animal is at other locations. Within a relatively small path, the same cells are repeatedly activated as the animal returns to the same position. Although simple rate coding (the coding of information based on whether neurons fire more rapidly or more slowly) resulting from these changes in firing rates may account for some of the neural coding of position, there is also a prominent role for the timing of the action potentials of a single place cell, relative to the firing of nearby cells in the local population. As the larger population of cells fire occasionally when the rat is outside of the cells' individual place fields, the firing patterns are organized to occur synchronously, forming wavelike voltage oscillations. These oscillations are measurable in local field potentials and electroencephalography (EEG). In the CA1 region of the hippocampus, where the place cells are located, these firing patterns give rise to theta waves.