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Nucleus reuniens of the thalamus contains head direction cells
Maciej M Jankowski1, Md Nurul Islam1, Nicholas F Wright2
1Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
Abstract:
Discrete populations of brain cells signal heading direction, rather like a compass. These 'head direction' cells are largely confined to a closely-connected network of sites. We describe, for the first time, a population of head direction cells in nucleus reuniens of the thalamus in the freely-moving rat. This novel subcortical head direction signal potentially modulates the hippocampal CA fields directly and, thus, informs spatial processing and memory.
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