Premium
Head direction cell firing properties and behavioural performance in 3‐D space
Author(s) -
Taube Jeffrey S.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the journal of physiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.802
H-Index - 240
eISSN - 1469-7793
pISSN - 0022-3751
DOI - 10.1113/jphysiol.2010.194266
Subject(s) - horizontal plane , heading (navigation) , neuroscience , vertical plane , representation (politics) , orientation (vector space) , population , plane (geometry) , signal (programming language) , computer science , communication , geometry , biology , physics , geology , geodesy , psychology , mathematics , medicine , telecommunications , environmental health , politics , political science , law , programming language
Previous studies have identified a population of neurons in the rat brain that discharge as a function of the animal's directional heading in the horizontal plane, independent of their location and on‐going behaviour. Most studies on head direction (HD) cells have explored how they respond in two‐dimensional environments within the horizontal plane. Many animals, however, live and locomote in a three‐dimensional world. This paper reviews how HD cells respond when the animal locomotes on a vertical surface or inverted on a ceiling. We found that HD cells fire in a normal, direction‐dependent manner when the rat is in the vertical plane, but not when the animal is inverted. Recent behavioural studies reported that rats are capable of accurately performing a navigational task when inverted, but only when the task was simple and started from not more than one or two entry points. Probe trials found that they did not have a flexible, map‐like representation of space when inverted. The loss of the directional signal when the animal is in an inverted orientation may account for the absence of the map‐like representation. Taken together, these findings indicate that a normal otolith signal contributes an important role to HD cell discharge.