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Head direction cell activity in the anterodorsal thalamus requires intact supragenual nuclei
- Source :
- Journal of neurophysiology. 108(10)
- Publication Year :
- 2012
-
Abstract
- Neural activity in several limbic areas varies as a function of the animal's head direction (HD) in the horizontal plane. Lesions of the vestibular periphery abolish this HD cell signal, suggesting an essential role for vestibular afference in HD signal generation. The organization of brain stem pathways conveying vestibular information to the HD circuit is poorly understood; however, recent anatomical work has identified the supragenual nucleus (SGN) as a putative relay. To test this hypothesis, we made lesions of the SGN in rats and screened for HD cells in the anterodorsal thalamus. In animals with complete bilateral lesions, the overall number of HD cells was significantly reduced relative to control animals. In animals with unilateral lesions of the SGN, directional activity was present, but the preferred firing directions of these cells were unstable and less influenced by the rotation of an environmental landmark. In addition, we found that preferred directions displayed large directional shifts when animals foraged for food in a darkened environment and when they were navigating from a familiar environment to a novel one, suggesting that the SGN plays a critical role in projecting essential self-motion (idiothetic) information to the HD cell circuit.
- Subjects :
- Physiology
Head (linguistics)
Thalamus
Place cell
Action Potentials
Biology
Cell activity
Electrolytes
Orientation
Pons
otorhinolaryngologic diseases
Animals
Rats, Long-Evans
Vestibular system
Neurons
Proprioception
General Neuroscience
Nerve Block
Articles
Darkness
Horizontal plane
Rats
Head Movements
Female
sense organs
Vestibule, Labyrinth
Neuroscience
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15221598
- Volume :
- 108
- Issue :
- 10
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of neurophysiology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....d3dfefe7bb0363bf667a7c028414f118