Anatomical organization of presubicular head-direction circuits

  1. Patricia Preston-Ferrer
  2. Stefano Coletta
  3. Markus Frey
  4. Andrea Burgalossi  Is a corresponding author
  1. Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Germany

Abstract

Neurons coding for head-direction are crucial for spatial navigation. Here we explored the cellular basis of head-direction coding in the rat dorsal presubiculum (PreS). We found that layer2 is composed of two principal cell populations (calbindin-positive and calbindin-negative neurons) which targeted the contralateral PreS and retrosplenial cortex, respectively. Layer3 pyramidal neurons projected to the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC). By juxtacellularly recording PreS neurons in awake rats during passive-rotation, we found that head-direction responses were preferentially contributed by layer3 pyramidal cells, whose long-range axons branched within layer3 of the MEC. In contrast, layer2 neurons displayed distinct spike-shapes, were not modulated by head-direction but rhythmically-entrained by theta-oscillations. Fast-spiking interneurons showed only weak directionality and theta-rhythmicity, but were significantly modulated by angular velocity. Our data thus indicate that PreS neurons differentially contribute to head-direction coding, and point to a cell-type- and layer-specific routing of directional and non-directional information to downstream cortical targets.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Patricia Preston-Ferrer

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Stefano Coletta

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Markus Frey

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Andrea Burgalossi

    Werner-Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen, Germany
    For correspondence
    andrea.burgalossi@cin.uni-tuebingen.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures were performed according to the German guidelines on animal welfare and approved by the local institution in charge of experiments using animals (Regierungspraesidium Tuebingen, permit numbers CIN2/14, CIN5/14 and CIN8/14).

Copyright

© 2016, Preston-Ferrer 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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  1. Patricia Preston-Ferrer
  2. Stefano Coletta
  3. Markus Frey
  4. Andrea Burgalossi
(2016)
Anatomical organization of presubicular head-direction circuits
eLife 5:e14592.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14592

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.14592

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