Nucleus reuniens of the thalamus contains head direction cells

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. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.03075.001

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