{"id":18299,"date":"2015-02-10T10:37:59","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T10:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/research\/brains-grid-cells-need-signals-from-head-cells-to-help-with-spatial-navigation\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T10:57:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T05:27:41","slug":"brains-grid-cells-need-signals-from-head-cells-to-help-with-spatial-navigation","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/brains-grid-cells-need-signals-from-head-cells-to-help-with-spatial-navigation","title":{"rendered":"Brain&#8217;s grid cells need signals from head cells to help with spatial navigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">It is known that neurons called grid cells to form a network known as the brain\u2019s \u201cinner GPS\u201d that help humans and animals to navigate. Grid cells get input from place cells in the hippocampus, but it was not known whether head direction cells supported grid cell function. Researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire studied rats and discovered that these neurons receive spatial information from head direction cells in the thalamus. They demonstrated this by severing the connections between head direction and grid cells in live rats by infusing the sodium channel inhibitor lidocaine into the thalamus, which temporarily reduced the grid-like pattern of grid cell firing in the animals, suggesting that signals from head cells are necessary for grid cells to function.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva,sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Read more in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.the-scientist.com\/?articles.view\/articleNo\/42095\/title\/-Inner-GPS--Support\/\">Scientific American<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33313,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"new_tags":[],"series":[],"subject":[2874],"class_list":["post-18299","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-psychology-and-neuroscience"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Brain&#039;s grid cells need signals from head cells to help with spatial navigation | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It is known that neurons called grid cells to form a network known as the brain\u2019s \u201cinner GPS\u201d that help humans and animals to navigate. Researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire studied rats and discovered that these neurons receive spatial information from head direction cells in the thalamus. Read on to find out more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/brains-grid-cells-need-signals-from-head-cells-to-help-with-spatial-navigation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Brain&#039;s grid cells need signals from head cells to help with spatial navigation | Editage Insights\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is known that neurons called grid cells to form a network known as the brain\u2019s \u201cinner GPS\u201d that help humans and animals to navigate. Researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire studied rats and discovered that these neurons receive spatial information from head direction cells in the thalamus. 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