Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

Mental replays enable flexible navigation

While rats pause to eat or rest during navigation tasks, neuronal sequences in the brain are replaying routes around moving obstacles, allowing the animals to reach their goals even in changing environments.
  1. Jérôme Epsztein

    1. Jérôme Epsztein is at INMED/INSERM U1249, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille 13273, France.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

The ability to navigate is essential to daily life, whether someone is driving to work or walking to the coffee machine. To negotiate complex environments, one can follow instructions: ‘turn right at the bakery’, for example. This strategy is simple and requires little effort, but is inflexible — if the bakery is no longer there, one is lost. One could use a map instead: with external cues, one can locate oneself on the map and plot the shortest path to one’s destination. This requires more effort but has the advantage that all routes (even unfamiliar ones) can be seen at a glance, allowing flexibility if, say, a street is blocked by traffic. Yet humans (and other animals) can also flexibly navigate complex and changing environments without instructions, and were able to do so well before the advent of maps (let alone GPS technology). How? Writing in Neuron, Widloski and Foster1 report a role for replays of neuronal activity that represent spatial trajectories.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 605, 35-36 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01035-0

References

  1. Widloski, J. & Foster, D. J. Neuron https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.02.002 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. O’Keefe, J. & Nadel, L. The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map (Oxford Univ. Press, 1978).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Wilson, M. A. & McNaughton, B. L. Science 261, 1055–1058 (1993).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Nyberg, N., Duvelle, É., Barry, C. & Spiers, H. J. Neuron 110, 394–422 (2022).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Foster, D. J. & Wilson, M. A. Nature 440, 680–683 (2006).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Lee, A. K. & Wilson, M. A. Neuron 36, 1183–1194 (2002).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Diba, K. & Buzsáki, G. Nature Neurosci. 10, 1241–1242 (2007).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Muller, R. U. & Kubie, J. L. J. Neurosci. 7, 1951–1968 (1987).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Rivard, B., Li, Y., Lenck-Santini, P.-P., Poucet, B. & Muller, R. U. J. Gen. Physiol. 124, 9–25 (2004).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Gillespie, A. K. et al. Neuron 109, 3149–3163 (2021).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Gridchyn, I., Schoenenberger, P., O’Neill, J. & Csicsvari, J. Neuron 106, 291–300 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Stark, E., Roux, L., Eichler, R. & Buzsáki, G. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 10521–10526 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links