Interspike interval analysis and spikelets in presubicular head-direction cells

• DOI: 10.1152/jn.00019.2018
• Publication Date: 2018-05-02T13:38:11Z
• Authors: Stefano Coletta; Roxana Zeraati; Khaled Nasr; Patricia Preston-...; Andrea Burgalossi
• Keywords: Neural coding

Head-direction (HD) neurons are thought to provide the mammalian brain with an internal sense of direction. These cells, which selectively increase their firing when animal's head points in a specific direction, use spike rate encode HD high signal-to-noise ratio. In present work, we analyzed train features presubicular cells recorded juxtacellularly passively rotated rats. We found that could be classified into two groups on basis propensity fire spikes at short interspike intervals. "Bursty" displayed distinct waveforms and were weakly but significantly more modulated by compared "nonbursty" cells. subset neurons, observed occurrence spikelets, small-amplitude "spike-like" events, whose tuning was highly correlated co-recorded juxtacellular spikes. Bursty nonbursty as well also freely moving animals during natural behavior. speculate bursts spikelets might contribute coding enhancing its accuracy transmission reliability downstream targets. NEW & NOTEWORTHY evidence head-direction can classes (bursty nonbursty) electrophysiological properties stronger directional neurons. for (spike spikelets) precision robustness code.