Data from: Estimation of self-motion duration and distance in rodents

Spatial orientation and navigation rely on information about landmarks and self-motion cues gained from multi-sensory sources. In this study, we focused on self-motion and examined the capability of rodents to extract and make use of information about own movement, i.e. path integration. Path integration has been investigated in depth in insects and humans. Demonstrations in rodents, however, mostly stem from experiments on heading direction; less is known about distance estimation. We introduce a novel behavioural paradigm that allows for probing temporal and spatial contributions to path integration. The paradigm is a bisection task comprising movement in a virtual reality environment in combination with either timing the duration ran or estimating the distance covered. We performed experiments with Mongolian gerbils and could show that the animals can keep track of time and distance during spatial navigation.空间定向与导航依赖于多感官渠道获取的地标信息与自身运动线索。本研究聚焦于自身运动维度，考察啮齿类动物提取并利用自身运动信息的能力，即路径积分（path integration）。路径积分这一机制已在昆虫与人类群体中得到深入探究，但针对啮齿类动物的相关验证大多仅围绕朝向方向的实验展开，目前学界对其距离估算能力的认知仍较为匮乏。我们提出了一种全新的行为范式，可用于探究时间与空间因素对路径积分的贡献。该范式为二分任务，实验动物需在虚拟现实（virtual reality）环境中完成移动，并需二选一完成两项操作：一是计时移动时长，二是估算行进距离。我们以蒙古沙鼠为实验对象开展实验，结果证实该类动物能够在空间导航过程中追踪自身的运动时长与行进距离。