Differential effects of visual and tactile deprivation on spatially modulated cells in the medial entorhinal cortex

Spatial navigation requires internal maps to remain anchored to external sensory cues. The medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) contains spatially modulated cell types, but how visual and tactile cues jointly support them is unclear. Here we show, using miniature two-photon calcium imaging in freely moving male mice, that sensory deprivation has context-dependent effects. In a visually dominated environment, darkness disrupted all spatially modulated cell types, especially grid and non-grid spatial representations; subsequent whisker trimming had limited additional effects, but more clearly altered head-direction and border-cell tuning. In darkness with salient tactile landmarks, all spatially modulated cell types formed cue-anchored representations, and whisker trimming more strongly impaired grid and spatial coding. Some neurons remained stable after combined deprivation, consistent with support from boundary-related tactile signals. Additionally, a subset of MEC neurons showed activity correlated with whisker movement. These findings reveal flexible integration of visual and tactile information in MEC spatial coding. How different types of sensory inputs modulate spatial representations is not fully understood. The authors show that rodents flexibly use visual and tactile cues in different contexts to maintain spatial maps, with distinct classes of spatially-modulated cells showing different sensitivities to sensory loss.