"Prospective memory" in action

"What you are looking at is an pictorialized overhead view of a rat coming to a choice point in the maze. The rat is indicated by the white circle. The colors indicate the firing rates for hippocampal neurons with place fields on the maze with reddish parts indicating high firing rate."

"At the choice point of the maze ... the recorded hippocampal neurons do something very odd. What the rat will do is look down the maze in the direction of each of its two choices. When the rat looks down in one direction place cells that correspond to position down that path will activate. When the rat looks down the other direction place cells corresponding to position in that part of the maze will activate. The important part is though that the rat has not reached that point in the maze yet; the choice point causes a dissociation between the location of the animal and the firing of the place cells. More interestingly, it is as if the rat's brain is simulating what is going to happen if the rat runs in that direction."

From Science Blogs. More good stuff here. Picked up from Andrew Sullivan.