AbstractöTo test whether the location coding of lateral septal cells is dependent on cue constellations, we examined single units in two di¡erent recording arenas on alternating days. Repeated recordings of lateral septal neurons in the same arena revealed that matching locations are encoded on separate days by about one third of the cells. The cells typically showed location-selective ¢ring in only one of the two recording arenas and initially showed unrelated patterns when tested in a di¡erent recording arena. When tested for a second time in each recording arena, the initially dissimilar patterns were modi¢ed towards increased similarity between arenas. Simultaneously recorded hippocampal principal cells showed distinct place ¢elds for each recording arena throughout the recording sequence. These results indicate that the initial reorganization of the lateral septal location coding may occur as a direct consequence of the hippocampal reorganization. Further septal reorganization is then partially independent of established place ¢elds in the CA1 and CA3 area.Location-selective cells in cortical areas that receive projections from hippocampus proper (i.e. the subiculum and the entorhinal cortex) have not been shown to encode di¡erences between recording arenas. Although some characteristics of this generalized coding scheme have also been found for location-selective lateral septal cells, the encoding of context information was generally preserved in the subcortical target cells of projections from the CA1 and CA3 area. ß 2002 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Key words: septum, hippocampus, place ¢elds, remapping.Allocentric space is encoded by the ¢ring rate of neurons in multiple subregions of the hippocampal formation including the CA1 area, the CA3 area, the dentate gyrus, the subiculum, and the entorhinal cortex (O'Keefe, 1976;Barnes et al., 1990;Mizumori et al., 1992;Quirk et al., 1992;Sharp and Green, 1994). Neurons in these subregions show localized increases in ¢ring rates when a rodent occupies the section of the arena £oor that is referred to as the place ¢eld. The size of the ¢elds and their peak ¢ring rates above baseline levels show pronounced variability for di¡erent cells within and, in particular, between di¡erent hippocampal subregions. In addition to variability for the same recording arena, cells in the hippocampal formation also show a spectrum of responses when tested in a second recording arena.The most common changes that are seen for cells in the CA1 and CA3 area in a modi¢ed arena are increased or decreased background ¢ring rates in addition to altered spatial ¢ring patterns such as the onset, o¡set, and shift of location-speci¢c neuronal activity (Hill, 1978;Kubie and Ranck, 1983;Muller and Kubie, 1987;Thompson and Best, 1989;Wilson and McNaughton, 1993). If shifted, the altered ¢ring patterns are typically not related to each other by a rotation or translation (Kubie and Ranck, 1983;Muller and Kubie, 1987;Bostock et al., 1991;Quirk et al., 1992;Tanila et ...