Speed cells are neurons who’s firing rate depends on the speed of the organism moving throughout an environment. They were discovered in 2005. These cells are located in the Endorhinal Cortex (EC) and are believed to be used together with grid cells and head direction cells for mapping the environment.
Main paper: “Speed cells in the medial entorhinal cortex” https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14622
It doesn’t matter if the organism can’t see, so these cells don’t seem to be influenced by visual cues.
The cells are also better at predicting future speeds versus the current speed, so these cells can be thought of speed prediction cells.
