Simulation of a Thalamocortical Circuit for Computing Directional Heading in the Rat

Several regions of the rat brain contain neurons known as head-direction celis,which encode the animal's directional heading during spatial navigation. This paper presents a biophysical model of head-direction cell acti vity, which suggests that a thalamocortical circuit might compute therat's head direction by integrating the angular velocity of the head over time. The model was implemented using the neural simulator NEURON, and makes testable predictions about the structure and function ofthe rat head-direction circuit.