Rapid response of head direction cells to reorienting visual cues: a computational model

Abstract We model head direction (HD) cells in the rat’s limbic system. The intrinsic dynamics of the HD model is determined by a continuous attractor network based on spiking formal neurons. Synaptic excitation is mediated by NMDA and AMPA formal receptors, whereas inhibition is mediated by GABA receptors. We focus on the temporal aspects of state transitions of the HD system following reorienting visual stimuli and reproduce the short transient latencies (about ) observed in the anterodorsal thalamic nucleus (ADN). A contribution of the model is an experimentally testable prediction concerning the state update dynamics as a function of the magnitude of reorientation. The results predict a progressive shift of the preferred directions of ADN cells for angles smaller than , whereas an abrupt jump is predicted for larger offsets.