Summary: Journal of Computational Neuroscience 18, 205­227, 2005
c 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. Manufactured in The Netherlands.
A Continuous Attractor Network Model Without Recurrent Excitation:
Maintenance and Integration in the Head Direction Cell System
CHRISTIAN BOUCHENY
Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action, CNRS-Coll`ege de France, 11 pl. M. Berthelot,
75005 Paris, France
NICOLAS BRUNEL
Laboratory of Neurophysics and Physiology of the Motor System, CNRS-University Paris 5, 45 rue des Saints
P`eres, 75270 Paris, Cedex 06, France
ANGELO ARLEO,
Laboratory of Physiology of Perception and Action, CNRS-Coll`ege de France, 11 pl. M. Berthelot,
75005 Paris, France
angelo.arleo@csl.sony.fr
Received March 9, 2004; Revised July 20, 2004; Accepted November 4, 2004
Action Editor: David Terman
Abstract. Motivated by experimental observations of the head direction system, we study a three population
network model that operates as a continuous attractor network. This network is able to store in a short-term memory
an angular variable (the head direction) as a spatial profile of activity across neurons in the absence of selective
external inputs, and to accurately update this variable on the basis of angular velocity inputs. The network is

Source: Arleo, Angelo - Laboratory of Neurobiology of Adaptive Processes, Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris 6

Collections: Biology and Medicine