Neural systems supporting navigation

- Recent neuroimaging and electrophysiology studies have begun to shed light on the neural dynamics of navigation systems.
- Computational models have advanced theories of how entorhinal grid cells and hippocampal place cells might serve navigation.
- Hippocampus and entorhinal cortex provide complementary representations of routes and vectors for navigation.

Much is known about how neural systems determine current spatial position and orientation in the environment. By contrast little is understood about how the brain represents future goal locations or computes the distance and direction to such goals. Recent electrophysiology, computational modelling and neuroimaging research have shed new light on how the spatial relationship to a goal may be determined and represented during navigation. This research suggests that the hippocampus may code the path to the goal while the entorhinal cortex represents the vector to the goal. It also reveals that the engagement of the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex varies across the different operational stages of navigation, such as during travel, route planning, and decision-making at waypoints.