Large excitatory synaptic weights and large dendritic inhibition provide place cell stability.

(A-C) Effect of noise on place fields for the first (blue) and last (orange) laps of exploration.(A) Destabilization of place fields by noise on presynaptic place fields. We measure the change on postsynaptic place field following changes on presynaptic place field amplitudes (see Methods). (B) Destabilization of place fields by noise on presynaptic firing rates. We measure the change on postsynaptic place field following the addition of a noisy input to presynaptic neurons (see Methods). (C) Destabilization of place fields by noise on synaptic weights. We measure the change in postsynaptic place field following changes on synaptic weights (see Methods). For all three sources of noise (A-C), the effect of the noise over place fields is higher in the first lap than in the last lap.