Journal
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 21, Issue 15, Pages 5740-5751Publisher
SOC NEUROSCIENCE
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.21-15-05740.2001
Keywords
dorsal tegmental nucleus of Gudden; lateral mammillary nuclei; head direction cell; angular head velocity; nucleus prepositus hypoglossi; directional heading; neural integration; vestibular system; navigation; spatial orientation
Categories
Funding
- NIMH NIH HHS [MH48924, MH01286, R01 MH048924, K02 MH001286, R29 MH048924] Funding Source: Medline
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Many neurons in the rat lateral mammillary nuclei (LMN) fire selectively in relation to the animal's head direction (HD) in the horizontal plane independent of the rat's location or behavior. One hypothesis of how this representation is generated and updated is via subcortical projections from the dorsal tegmental nucleus (DTN). Here we report the type of activity in DTN neurons. The majority of cells (75%) fired as a function of the rat's angular head velocity (AHV). Cells exhibited one of two types of firing patterns: (1) symmetric, in which the firing rate was positively correlated with AHV during head turns in both directions, and (2) asymmetric, in which the firing rate was positively correlated with head turns in one direction and correlated either negatively or not at all in the opposite direction. In addition to modulation by AHV, some of the AHV cells (40.1%) were weakly modulated by the rat's linear velocity, and a smaller number were modulated by HD (11%) or head pitch (15.9%). Autocorrelation analyses indicated that with the head stationary, AHV cells displayed irregular discharge patterns. Because afferents from the DTN are the major source of information projecting to the LMN, these results suggest that AHV information from the DTN plays a significant role in generating the HD signal in LMN. A model is proposed showing how DTN AHV cells can generate and update the LMN HD cell signal.
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