近日，教授émilie Macé及其研究小组报道了视觉对象细化头部方向编码。2025年9月11日出版的《科学》发表了这项成果。

利用功能性超声成像，该团队确定了被物体图像优先激活的大脑区域，而不是被打乱的图像。虽然视觉皮层没有表现出偏好，但与空间导航相关的区域被视觉物体优先激活。在皮质头向（HD）系统中枢——枕下后的电生理记录证实了HD细胞和快速尖峰中间神经元对视觉物体的偏好。在自由运动的动物中，视觉物体增加了与视觉物体对齐的HD细胞的放电率，但减少了编码其他方向的HD细胞的活动。

据悉，动物以视觉对象为主题来引导与导航相关的行为。然而，视觉对象偏好区域尚未被描述，这限制了他们对视觉对象如何影响空间导航系统处理的理解。

附：英文原文

Title: Visual objects refine head direction coding

Author: Dominique Siegenthaler, Henry Denny, Sofía Skromne Carrasco, Johanna Luise Mayer, Daniel Levenstein, Adrien Peyrache, Stuart Trenholm, émilie Macé

Issue&Volume: 2025-09-11

Abstract: Animals use visual objects to guide navigation-related behaviors. However, visual object–preferring areas have yet to be described in the mouse brain, limiting our understanding of how visual objects affect spatial navigation system processing. Using functional ultrasound imaging, we identified brain areas that were preferentially activated by images of objects compared with their scrambled versions. Whereas visual cortex did not show a preference, areas associated with spatial navigation were preferentially activated by visual objects. Electrophysiological recordings in postsubiculum, the cortical head direction (HD) system hub, confirmed a preference for visual objects in both HD cells and fast-spiking interneurons. In freely moving animals, visual objects increased firing rates of HD cells aligned with a visual object but decreased activity in HD cells coding for other directions.

DOI: adu9828

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu9828