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Category: Data

Description: Data deposited for the published manuscript: Xu Z, Wu W, Winter SS, Mehlman ML, Butler WN, Simmons C, Harvey RE, Berkowitz LE, Chen Y, Taube JS, Wilber AA, Clark BJ. (2019). A comparison of neural decoding methods and population coding across thalamo-cortical head direction cells. Frontiers in Neural Circuits. 13, 75. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2019.00075 Abstract: Head direction (HD) cells, which fire action potentials whenever an animal points its head in a particular direction, are thought to subserve the animal’s sense of spatial orientation. HD cells are found prominently in several thalamo-cortical regions including anterior thalamic nuclei, postsubiculum, medial entorhinal cortex, parasubiculum, and the parietal cortex. While a number of methods in neural decoding have been developed to assess the dynamics of spatial signals within thalamo-cortical regions, studies conducting a quantitative comparison of machine learning and statistical model-based decoding methods on HD cell activity are currently lacking. Here, we compare statistical model-based and machine learning approaches by assessing decoding accuracy and evaluate variables that contribute to population coding across thalamo-cortical HD cells.