Head direction cells stably orient mice to outside world

The idea that some neural representations can “drift,” or change over time, even in the seeming absence of learning, is broadly accepted. But characterizing the phenomenon across the brain has proved challenging. “The interesting part is what exactly seems to be stable and what exactly seems to be drifting. That’s not an easy question,” says Tobias Rose, a group leader at the University of Bonn Medical Center, who presented findings on drift in the mouse primary visual cortex earlier this month.