PHGY 314 Lecture 2: Brandon - lecture 2
11 Feb 2017
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Anatomy and physiology of head direction cells, place cells and grid cells. Head direction cells (hdcs) act like a compass. They are located in the medial temporal lobe (mtl) Use external cues to orient the map accordingly. The vestibular cortex projects to hdcs (seen in blue) **take note of the direction of the different arrows. Projects downwards, (green stream) signaling head angular velocity. Symmetric = signaling is independent of head direction. The greater the velocity, the higher the firing rate. Asymmetric = signal is dependent on the head direction. Firing rate increases when head velocity increases towards a specific direction (cw or ccw) B1 increased firing rate when head is turning to the left vs right. B2 increased firing rate when head is turning to the right vs left narrow tuning. We see an increase in specialisation moving up the pw. Head dire(cid:272)tion (cid:272)ells in the and e(cid:454)hi(cid:271)it (cid:862)anti(cid:272)ipator(cid:455)(cid:863) firing. Anterior dorsal thalamic nucleus (adn) has sharper tuning.
