Nucleus reuniens of the thalamus contains head direction cells
- Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
- Cardiff University, United Kingdom
Abstract
Discrete populations of brain cells signal heading direction, rather like a compass. These 'head direction' cells are largely confined to a closely-connected network of sites. We describe, for the first time, a population of head direction cells in nucleus reuniens of the thalamus in the freely-moving rat. This novel subcortical head direction signal potentially modulates the hippocampal CA fields directly and, thus, informs spatial processing and memory.
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Animal experimentation: Experiments were conducted in accordance with European Community directive, 86/609/EC, and the Cruelty toAnimals Act, 1876, and followed Bioresources Ethics Committee, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, as well as LAST Ireland and international guidelines of good practice. Surgery was conducted under ketamine/xylazine anaesthesia, an appropriate post-surgery monitoring and analgesia regime was in place, and every effort was made to minimize suffering.
Copyright
© 2014, Jankowski et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Nucleus reuniens of the thalamus contains head direction cells
eLife 3:e03075.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.03075
