Tor Védrun Stensola

Associate Professor Institutt for psykologi

Email: tor.stensola@uia.no
Phone: +47 38 14 10 27
Office: A114A (Universitetsveien 50, 4630 Kristiansand, Norway)

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I'm a neuroscientist with a degree in neuroscience. I did a BSc in neuroscience at Otago University in New Zealand, an MSc in neuroscience from Oxford University, and Dr. Philos. in Moserlaben at NTNU in Trondheim.

In the Moser lab I worked on the grid cell system together with my partner Hanne Stensola. We showed that the grid system consists of a few functionally separate modules, and showed how their spatial activity is geometrically anchored to the outside world.

As a postdoctoral fellow in Lisbon, the focus shifted to sensory processes, and how internally generated activity controls perception. In this work, much focus was on behavioral paradigms and we developed a new virtual environment for mice. Our work was mainly on the olfactory system.

In 2021, Hanne Stensola and I started neuroscience research at UiA in Kristiansand. Our lab will further study the cross-section between sensory impressions and the brain's own expressions.

Stensola, Tor & Stensola, Hanne (2022). Understanding Categorical Learning in Neural Circuits Through the Primary Olfactory Cortex. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. 16. doi: 10.3389/fncel.2022.920334. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2015). Shearing-induced asymmetry in entorhinal grid cells. Nature. ISSN 0028-0836. 518(7538), p. 207–212. doi: 10.1038/nature14151. Full text in Research Archive
Giocomo, Lisa; Stensola, Tor; Bonnevie, Tora; Cauter, Tiffany Van; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2014). Topography of head direction cells in medial entorhinal cortex. Current Biology. ISSN 0960-9822. 24(3), p. 252–262. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.12.002. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Hanne; Stensola, Tor; Solstad, Trygve; Frøland, Kristian; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2012). The entorhinal grid map is discretized. Nature. ISSN 0028-0836. 492(7427), p. 72–78. doi: 10.1038/nature11649. Full text in Research Archive

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Goodwin, Morten; Stensola, Hanne; Lorach, Henri; Brelin, Kenth Frelsøy; Stensola, Tor & LeCun, Yann (2024). Den store serien om KI (5:10) - Neuralink og dype nevrale nettverk. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor (2015). Det er på tide å revurdere psykedelika FORSKNING. [Journal]. VG. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor & Stensola, Hanne (2014). Nobelpris-ekteparets hjelpere fra Kristiansand. [Internet]. fædrelandsvennen. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Hanne & Stensola, Tor (2014). Norges neste hjernestjerner. [Journal]. vg. Full text in Research Archive
Hägglund, Martin; Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2014). Grid cells interact with local boundaries. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Hägglund, Martin; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2014). Grid cell orientation is constrained by environmental geometry. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Hanne & Stensola, Tor (2014). Superparene. [Journal]. VG : Verdens gang. Full text in Research Archive
Igarashi, Kei M; Stensola, Hanne; Stensola, Tor; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2014). Modular organization of gamma oscillations in medial entorhinal cortex. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2013). Environmental constraints on grid cell orientation. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Grid cells provide a metric measure of the local environment via regularly spaced firing fields. We recently showed a modular organization of grid-cell spacing that co-occurred with other properties of the grid pattern such as grid orientation. Although grid orientation was more similar within than between modules, grid orientation differences were usually small within animals. In the present work, we compared grid orientation across animals that were foraging in large square enclosures. Grid orientation was not randomly or uniformly distributed. Different animals expressed surprisingly similar grid orientations within the same environment. To determine the influence of environmental factors on grid orientation, we analyzed grid orientation in two different large square boxes in different rooms. In one enclosure, the distribution was unimodal, covering a range of approximately 30 degrees of the 60-degree orientation space. In the other, the distribution was bimodal, with peaks offset exactly by 30 degrees,. Both orientation peaks were nearly parallel to one of the walls of the enclosure. Normalizing grid orientation to the closest axis of the environment thus yielded a unimodal distribution also in the second environment. Shuffling grid modules across different animals did not significantly affect the distribution of grid orientation, demonstrating that the variation in grid orientation across modules within animals is comparable to the variation in grid orientation across animals. The observations suggest that environmental factors constrain grid orientation in a similar way across animals, and hint towards the possibility that some solutions of grid layout may be more optimal than others.
Giocomo, Lisa; Bonnevie, Tora; Stensola, Tor; Cauter, Tiffany Van; Moser, Edvard Ingjald & Moser, May-Britt (2013). Topographical organization of head direction signals in medial entorhinal cortex. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Spatial navigation is thought to depend on functionally specialized neurons in the parahippocampus, such as head direction and grid cells. Previous work has shown a topographically organized expansion of spatial scale in grid cells along the dorsal-ventral axis of MEC (Hafting et al., 2005; Sargolini et al., 2006). Because this expansion parallels gradients in a myriad of properties of intrinsic membrane potential dynamics and synaptic integration (Giocomo et al., 2007; Garden et al., 2008), we asked if functional gradients are a broader feature of medial entorhinal topography by examining another specialized MEC cell population - head direction neurons. To examine the organization in MEC head direction neurons, we implanted rats with micro-drives running parallel to layer III or V of MEC and recorded neural activity during exploration of large open environments. Using this approach, we found a dorsal-ventral organization in the tuning breadth of MEC head direction cells that resulted from a dorsal-ventral decrease in the proportion of sharply tuned head direction cells. This organization in tuning applied to multiple populations of MEC head direction cells and existed in at least two different rodent species. Unfolded flat maps revealed that sharply tuned head direction cells were present in a dorsal band that ran along the entire medial-lateral axis investigated, suggesting that the topographical organization in head direction cells occurs predominately along the dorsal-ventral axis. Comparison with grid cell data collected from the same group of rats indicates that the dorsal to ventral head direction organization may follow a more continuous topography than the highly discrete and modular dorsal-ventral increase in grid scale (Stensola et al., 2012). Combined, our data points to a general change in scale along the dorsal-ventral axis of the MEC, expressed in multiple functional cell types and across different rodent species, suggesting that graded representations may be a fundamental coding scheme utilized by MEC circuits.
Stensola, Hanne; Stensola, Tor; Moser, Edvard Ingjald & Moser, May-Britt (2013). Functional dissociation of grid modules in a nested environment. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Grid cells provide the animal with a metric map via spatial firing fields which tile the environment in a highly structured manner. We recently showed that grid cells are organized into discrete modules with different grid spacing. Grid cells of different modules could respond independently to an environmental compression, with cells of small grid spacing retaining internode relationships whereas cells of larger grid spacing compressed with the environment. One interpretation of these observations is that small-scale grid cells respond to proximal features of the environment while larger-scale modules respond to distal features. To test this possibility, we trained rats in a nested environment where a proximal reference frame was moved relative to a stable distal frame. Grid cells of different spacing were recorded while the rat was running on an elevated platform within a highly familiar recording arena. The platform was moved between the four corners of the larger box while the animal was still on it. We found that the cells with large grid spacing produced four different maps in the four corners, which combined to produce a grid pattern very similar to the original pattern in the familiar box. The cells with smaller grid spacing would on the contrary keep quite similar grid maps independently of the position of the platform, albeit with small but consistent phase shifts in the different platform positions. These maps did not produce a regular grid pattern when stitched together. This indicates that different grid modules represent the environment at different levels; the smaller grids represent the smaller features of the environment more strongly while the larger grids rather represent the larger surrounding environment.
Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Solstad, Trygve; Frøland, Kristian; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2012). 702.10/DDD26 - The entorhinal grid map is discretized. SFN Abstract Viewer/Itinerary Planner. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Hanne; Stensola, Tor; Solstad, Trygve; Frøland, Kristian; Moser, Edvard Ingjald & Moser, May-Britt (2011). Modular organization of grid scale. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Moser, Edvard Ingjald & Moser, May-Britt (2011). Functional independence of grid cell modules. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Solstad, Trygve; Frøland, Kristian; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2011). Functional Independence of Grid Cell Modules. Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Tor; Stensola, Hanne; Solstad, Trygve; Frøland, Kristian; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2010). Grid Cells in the Medial Entorhinal Cortex: One Map or Many Maps? Full text in Research Archive
Stensola, Hanne; Stensola, Tor; Solstad, Trygve; Frøland, Kristian; Moser, May-Britt & Moser, Edvard Ingjald (2010). Modular Organization of Entorhinal Grid Cells. Full text in Research Archive
Moser, May-Britt; Moser, Edvard Ingjald & Stensola, Tor (2014). Population codes in medial entorhinal cortex. Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. ISSN 9788232602353. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Current systems neuroscience has unprecedented momentum, in terms of both technological and conceptual development. It is crucial to study systems mechanisms and their associated functions with behavior in mind. Hippocampal and parahippocampal cortices has proved a highly suitable experimental system because the high level functions that are performed here, including episodic memory formation, are accessible through the clear readout of spatial behavior. Grid cells in medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) have been proposed to account for the spatial selectivity in downstream hippocampal place cells. Until now, however, entorhinal grid cells have only been studied on single cell– or small local ensemble level. The main reason for population studies lagging behind that of hippocampus is the technical difficulties associated with entorhinal implantation and recording. Here we have overcome some of the main technical hurdles, and recorded unprecedented number of cells from distinct functional classes in MEC. We show in Paper 1 that the entorhinal grid map is organized into sub-maps–or modules–that contain grid cells sharing numerous features including spatial pattern scale, orientation, deformation and temporal modulation. We also demonstrate that grid modules in the same system can operate independently on the same input, raising the possibility that hippocampal capacity for encoding distinct spatial representations is enabled by the grid input. We further show in Paper 2 that also head direction cells in entorhinal cortex distribute according to a functional topography along the dorsoventral axis. The head direction system, however, was not modular in contrast to the grid system. Finally, Paper 3 details a common grid anchoring strategy shared across animals and environments. The grid pattern displayed a striking tendency to align to the cardinal axes of the environment, but systematically offset 7.5°. Through simulations, we show that this constitutes an optimal orientation of the grid to maximally decorrelate population encoding of environment border segments, providing a possible link to border-selective cells in the mechanisms that embeds internal representation of space into external frames of reference. These findings have implications for our understanding of entorhinal and hippocampal computations and add several new venues for further investigation.

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Published Apr. 16, 2024 11:40 AM