IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v517y2015i7533d10.1038_nature14031.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Three-dimensional head-direction coding in the bat brain

Author

Listed:
  • Arseny Finkelstein

    (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel)

  • Dori Derdikman

    (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
    Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 31096, Israel)

  • Alon Rubin

    (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel)

  • Jakob N. Foerster

    (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
    Present address: Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK.)

  • Liora Las

    (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel)

  • Nachum Ulanovsky

    (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel)

Abstract

Navigation requires a sense of direction (‘compass’), which in mammals is thought to be provided by head-direction cells, neurons that discharge when the animal’s head points to a specific azimuth. However, it remains unclear whether a three-dimensional (3D) compass exists in the brain. Here we conducted neural recordings in bats, mammals well-adapted to 3D spatial behaviours, and found head-direction cells tuned to azimuth, pitch or roll, or to conjunctive combinations of 3D angles, in both crawling and flying bats. Head-direction cells were organized along a functional–anatomical gradient in the presubiculum, transitioning from 2D to 3D representations. In inverted bats, the azimuth-tuning of neurons shifted by 180°, suggesting that 3D head direction is represented in azimuth × pitch toroidal coordinates. Consistent with our toroidal model, pitch-cell tuning was unimodal, circular, and continuous within the available 360° of pitch. Taken together, these results demonstrate a 3D head-direction mechanism in mammals, which could support navigation in 3D space.

Suggested Citation

  • Arseny Finkelstein & Dori Derdikman & Alon Rubin & Jakob N. Foerster & Liora Las & Nachum Ulanovsky, 2015. "Three-dimensional head-direction coding in the bat brain," Nature, Nature, vol. 517(7533), pages 159-164, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:517:y:2015:i:7533:d:10.1038_nature14031
    DOI: 10.1038/nature14031
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14031
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature14031?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. M. Jerome Beetz & Christian Kraus & Basil el Jundi, 2023. "Neural representation of goal direction in the monarch butterfly brain," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Guillaume Viejo & Thomas Cortier & Adrien Peyrache, 2018. "Brain-state invariant thalamo-cortical coordination revealed by non-linear encoders," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-25, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:517:y:2015:i:7533:d:10.1038_nature14031. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.