Goal-coding for navigation

Arriving at a goal is the raison d'être of navigation. Surprisingly we still know little about how the brain codes goal-related spatial information, such as how far the goal is or which direction it lies in. Using fMRI we have found evidence that the hippocampus tracks the path distance to the goal (Howard et al., 2014 Cur Biol.; Balaguer et al., 2016 Neuron) and the entorhinal cortex tracks the Euclidean distance and the allocentric direction to the goal (Howard et al., 2014; Chadwick et al., 2015 Cur Biol). In rodents we have found that hippocampal CA1 neurons track the distance to the goal during a navigation task (Spiers et al., 2018 Hippocampus).

In on-going research, we are exploring how distance and direction are coded in dynamic environments with shifting terrain and in highly familiar environments. Relevant publications from group:
Howard et al., 2014 Cur Biol.
Balaguer et al., 2016 Neuron
Chadwick et al., 2015 Cur Biol
Spiers et al, 2018 Hippocampus

See BBC New Interview about direction coding:
Clip to be forwarded.