Chadwick, MJ; Jolly, A; Amos, DP; Hassabis, D; Spiers, HJ; (2014) A goal direction signal in the human entorhinal/subicular region. Current Biology , 25 (1) pp. 87-92. 10.1016/j.cub.2014.11.001.

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Abstract

Being able to navigate to a safe place, such as a home or nest, is a fundamental behaviour 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 [1, 2]. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to record neural activity while participants made goal directions judgments based on a previously learned virtual environment. We applied multivoxel pattern analysis [3-5] to this 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 [6]. 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.

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