A Goal Direction Signal in the Human Entorhinal/Subicular Region

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 [1, 2]. 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 [3–5] 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 [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.