In Vivo Electrophysiological Approaches for Studying Head Direction Cells

Abstract Head direction (HD) cells fire as a function of the animal's directional heading within the environment and are thought to provide a sense of direction used for navigation. Over the past 3 decades, HD cells have been extensively studied using in vivo electrophysiological techniques. Here, we review how these techniques have been used to discover fundamental properties of HD cells and the rodent spatial processing circuit. We first describe the typical approach for performing in vivo extracellular electrophysiological recordings of HD cells. We then illustrate how this approach has been combined with other tools for measuring and manipulating the brain and behavior to reveal (1) the link between the HD signal and navigation behavior, (2) the influence of different sensory inputs on HD cell activity, and (3) functional relationships between nodes in the spatial processing circuit. We conclude by describing limitations of the traditional extracellular recording technique and how these limitations are overcome by recently developed electrophysiological, optogenetic, and imaging tools that offer new insights into the functional anatomy of the spatial processing circuit.

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