Previous studies of rodent navigation have suggested that the firing of hippocampal neurons is modulated by an animal's spatial position but not by its head direction. By recording from rat CA1 neurons during random foraging in real-world and virtual reality environments, Acharya et al. provide new evidence for head-directional selectivity in hippocampal neurons. Furthermore, they show that information from visual cues is sufficient to drive the neurons' head-directional selectivity, whereas vestibular information is not required.
References
Acharya, L. et al. Causal influence of visual cues on hippocampal directional selectivity. Cell http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.12.015 (2015)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Whalley, K. A new direction. Nat Rev Neurosci 17, 76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.1