%0 Journal Article %A Andrew S. Alexander %A Douglas A. Nitz %T Spatially periodic activation patterns of retrosplenial cortex encode route sub-spaces and distance travelled %D 2017 %R 10.1101/100537 %J bioRxiv %P 100537 %X Traversal of a complicated route is often facilitated by considering it as a set of related sub-spaces. Such compartmentalization processes could occur within retrosplenial cortex, a structure whose neurons simultaneously encode position within routes and other spatial coordinate systems. Here, retrosplenial cortex neurons were recorded as rats traversed a track having recurrent structure at multiple scales. Consistent with a major role in compartmentalization of complex routes, individual RSC neurons exhibited periodic activation patterns that repeated across route segments having the same shape. Concurrently, a larger population of RSC neurons exhibited single-cycle periodicity over the full route, effectively defining a framework for encoding of sub-route positions relative to the whole. The same population simultaneously provides a novel metric for distance from each route position to all others. Together, the findings implicate retrosplenial cortex in the extraction of path sub-spaces, the encoding of their spatial relationships to each other, and path integration. %U https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/01/15/100537.full.pdf