Head Direction Is Coded More Strongly Than Movement Direction In A Population Of Entorhinal Neurons
Published:
F. Raudies, M.P. Brandon, G.W. Chapman, M.E. Hasselmo. "Head Direction Is Coded More Strongly Than Movement Direction In A Population Of Entorhinal Neurons", Brain Research, 2015.
Abstract: The spatial firing pattern of entorhinal grid cells may be important for navigation Many different computational models of grid cell firing use path integration based on movement direction and the associated movement speed to drive grid cells However the response of neurons to movement direction has rarely been tested in contrast to multiple studies showing responses of neurons to head direction Here we analyzed the difference between head direction and movement direction during rat movement and analyzed cells recorded from entorhinal cortex for their tuning to movement direction During foraging behavior movement direction differs significantly from head direction The analysis of neuron responses shows that only 5 out of 758 medial entorhinal cells show significant coding for both movement direction and head direction when evaluating periods of rat behavior with speeds above 10 cm/s and 7301 angular difference between movement and head direction None of the cells coded movement direction alone In contrast 21 cells in this population coded only head direction during behavioral epochs with these constraints indicating much stronger coding of head direction in this population This suggests that the movement direction signal required by most grid cell models may arise from other brain structures than the medial entorhinal cortex
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