Dataset Information

A goal direction signal in the human entorhinal/subicular region.

ABSTRACT: Navigating to a safe place, such as a home or nest, is a fundamental behavior for all complex animals. Determining the direction to such goals is a crucial first step in navigation. Surprisingly, little is known about how or where in the brain this "goal direction signal" is represented. In mammals, "head-direction cells" are thought to support this process, but despite 30 years of research, no evidence for a goal direction representation has been reported. Here, we used fMRI to record neural activity while participants made goal direction judgments based on a previously learned virtual environment. We applied multivoxel pattern analysis to these data and found that the human entorhinal/subicular region contains a neural representation of intended goal direction. Furthermore, the neural pattern expressed for a given goal direction matched the pattern expressed when simply facing that same direction. This suggests the existence of a shared neural representation of both goal and facing direction. We argue that this reflects a mechanism based on head-direction populations that simulate future goal directions during route planning. Our data further revealed that the strength of direction information predicts performance. Finally, we found a dissociation between this geocentric information in the entorhinal/subicular region and egocentric direction information in the precuneus.

SUBMITTER: Chadwick MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4291144 | biostudies-other | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

ACCESS DATA

Publications

A goal direction signal in the human entorhinal/subicular region.

Chadwick Martin J MJ Jolly Amy E J AE Amos Doran P DP Hassabis Demis D Spiers Hugo J HJ

Current biology : CB 20141218 1

Navigating to a safe place, such as a home or nest, is a fundamental behavior for all complex animals. Determining the direction to such goals is a crucial first step in navigation. Surprisingly, little is known about how or where in the brain this "goal direction signal" is represented. In mammals, "head-direction cells" are thought to support this process, but despite 30 years of research, no evidence for a goal direction representation has been reported. Here, we used fMRI to record neural ac ...[more]

PMID: 25532898

Similar Datasets

Project description:Neuronal signals that are relevant for spatial navigation have been described in many species1-10. However, a circuit-level understanding of how such signals interact to guide navigational behaviour is lacking. Here we characterize a neuronal circuit in the Drosophila central complex that compares internally generated estimates of the heading and goal angles of the fly-both of which are encoded in world-centred (allocentric) coordinates-to generate a body-centred (egocentric) steering signal. Past work has suggested that the activity of EPG neurons represents the fly's moment-to-moment angular orientation, or heading angle, during navigation2,11. An animal's moment-to-moment heading angle, however, is not always aligned with its goal angle-that is, the allocentric direction in which it wishes to progress forward. We describe FC2 cells12, a second set of neurons in the Drosophila brain with activity that correlates with the fly's goal angle. Focal optogenetic activation of FC2 neurons induces flies to orient along experimenter-defined directions as they walk forward. EPG and FC2 neurons connect monosynaptically to a third neuronal class, PFL3 cells12,13. We found that individual PFL3 cells show conjunctive, spike-rate tuning to both the heading angle and the goal angle during goal-directed navigation. Informed by the anatomy and physiology of these three cell classes, we develop a model that explains how this circuit compares allocentric heading and goal angles to build an egocentric steering signal in the PFL3 output terminals. Quantitative analyses and optogenetic manipulations of PFL3 activity support the model. Finally, using a new navigational memory task, we show that flies expressing disruptors of synaptic transmission in subsets of PFL3 cells have a reduced ability to orient along arbitrary goal directions, with an effect size in quantitative accordance with the prediction of our model. The biological circuit described here reveals how two population-level allocentric signals are compared in the brain to produce an egocentric output signal that is appropriate for motor control.

Dataset Information

A goal direction signal in the human entorhinal/subicular region.

Publications

A goal direction signal in the human entorhinal/subicular region.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets