Grid cells with stable hexagonal firing patterns in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) carry the vital function of serving as a metric for the surrounding environment. Whether this mechanism processes only spatial information or involves nonspatial information remains elusive. Here, we fabricated an MEC-shaped microelectrode array (MEA) to detect the variation in neural spikes and local field potentials of the MEC when rats forage in a square enclosure with a planar, three-dimensional object and social landmarks in sequence. The results showed that grid cells exhibited rate remapping under social conditions in which spike firing fields closer to the social landmark had a higher firing rate. Furthermore, global remapping showed that hexagonal firing patterns were rotated and scaled when the planar landmark was replaced with object and social landmarks. In addition, when grid cells were activated, the local field potentials were dominated by the theta band (5–8 Hz), and spike phase locking was observed at troughs of theta oscillations. Our results suggest the pattern separation mechanism of grid cells in which the spatial firing structure and firing rate respond to spatial and social information, respectively, which may provide new insights into how the brain creates a cognitive map.

内侧内嗅皮层 (MEC) 中具有稳定六边形放电模式的网格细胞具有作为周围环境指标的重要功能。这种机制是只处理空间信息还是涉及非空间信息仍然难以捉摸。在这里，我们制造了一个 MEC 形微电极阵列 (MEA)，以检测当大鼠在具有平面、三维物体和社会地标的方形外壳中觅食时，MEC 的神经尖峰和局部场电位的变化。结果表明，网格单元在社会条件下表现出速率重新映射，其中靠近社会地标的尖峰发射场具有更高的发射率。此外，全局重新映射显示，当平面地标被物体和社会地标替换时，六边形发射模式会发生旋转和缩放。此外，当网格单元被激活时，局部场电位以θ波段（5-8Hz）为主，在θ振荡波谷处观察到尖峰锁相。我们的研究结果表明了网格细胞的模式分离机制，其中空间放电结构和放电率分别响应空间和社会信息，这可能为大脑如何创建认知图提供新的见解。