Topic: virtual heading

REM sleep is characterized by rapid eye movements, from which it gets its acronym, and is often accompanied by vivid visual dreams. Rapid eye movements occurring during REM sleep are proposed to represent gaze shifts in the virtual environment of dreams, while other studies suggest that they simply reflect random brainstem activity. In order to address this issue, we recorded from head direction (HD) cells in the anterodorsal nucleus of the thalamus (ADN), a population of neurons whose activity reports heading of the animal. Previous work has shown that during REM sleep, the population activit