Eva Zita Patai, Hugo J. Spiers. The Versatile Wayfinder: Prefrontal Contributions to Spatial Navigation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.010.

Highlights
“Navigation is a behavior fundamental to all mobile animals, and incorporates various cognitive functions, including memory, planning, decision-making, and updating models of the world.

Historically, the neural underpinnings of flexible navigation have focused on the hippocampal formation, but recent evidence suggests that regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) are crucial to many aspects of navigation, especially when environments are complex or dynamic.

This review summarizes what we know from recent human, non-human primate, and rodent studies, proposing a novel perspective that incorporates our knowledge across species and brain regions seeking to avoid tunnel vision in understanding the multifaceted behavior in navigation.”

Abstract
“The prefrontal cortex (PFC) supports decision-making, goal tracking, and planning. Spatial navigation is a behavior that taxes these cognitive processes, yet the role of the PFC in models of navigation has been largely overlooked. In humans, activity in dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) and ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC) during detours, reveal a role in inhibition and replanning. Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is implicated in planning and spontaneous internally-generated changes of route. Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) integrates representations of the environment with the value of actions, providing a ‘map’ of possible decisions. In rodents, medial frontal areas interact with hippocampus during spatial decisions and switching between navigation strategies. In reviewing these advances, we provide a framework for how different prefrontal regions may contribute to different stages of navigation.”

Eva Zita Patai, Hugo J. Spiers. The Versatile Wayfinder: Prefrontal Contributions to Spatial Navigation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.010.