RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Dynamic control of cortical head-direction signal by angular velocity
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 730374
DO 10.1101/730374
A1 Arseny Finkelstein
A1 Hervé Rouault
A1 Sandro Romani
A1 Nachum Ulanovsky
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/08/08/730374.abstract
AB The sense of direction requires accurate tracking of head direction at different turning-velocities, yet it remains unclear how this is achieved in the mammalian brain. Here we recorded head-direction cells in bat dorsal presubiculum and found that, surprisingly, the head-direction signal in this cortical region was dynamically controlled by angular velocity. In most neurons, a sharp head-direction tuning emerged at some angular velocity, but was absent at other velocities – resulting in a 4-fold increase in head-direction cell abundance. The head-direction tuning changed as a function of angular velocity primarily via a redistribution of spikes between the neuron’s preferred and null directions – while keeping the average firing-rate constant. These results could not be explained by existing ‘ring-attractor’ models of the head-direction system. We propose a novel recurrent network model that accounts for the observed dynamics of head-direction cells. This model predicts that the new classes of cells we found can improve the sensitivity of the head-direction system to directional sensory cues, and support angular-velocity integration.