{"id":2516,"date":"2021-12-27T11:36:01","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T01:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cognav.net\/?p=2516"},"modified":"2021-12-27T11:36:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T01:36:01","slug":"how-is-the-sense-of-space-properly-updated-when-travelling-and-heading-angles-differ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/?p=2516","title":{"rendered":"How is the sense of space properly updated when travelling and heading angles differ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cheng Lyu, L. F. Abbott &amp; Gaby Maimon. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-021-04067-0\"><strong>Building an allocentric travelling direction signal via vector computation<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<i>Nature<\/i>\u00a0(2021). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-021-04067-0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Abstract<br \/>\n&#8220;Many behavioural tasks require the manipulation of mathematical vectors, but, outside of computational models1,2,3,4,5,6,7,<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong> it is not known how brains perform vector operations<\/strong><\/span>. Here <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">we show how the Drosophila central complex, a region implicated in goal-directed navigation7,8,9,10, performs vector arithmetic<\/span><\/strong>. First, we describe a neural signal in the fan-shaped body that explicitly tracks the allocentric travelling angle of a fly, that is, the travelling angle in reference to external cues. Past work has identified neurons in Drosophila8,11,12,13 and mammals14 that track the heading angle of an animal referenced to external cues (for example, head direction cells), but this new signal illuminates <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">how the sense of space is properly updated when travelling and heading angles differ (for example, when walking sideways)<\/span><\/strong>. We then <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">characterize a neuronal circuit that performs an egocentric-to-allocentric (that is, body-centred to world-centred) coordinate transformation and vector addition to compute the allocentric travelling direction<\/span><\/strong>. This circuit operates by mapping two-dimensional vectors onto sinusoidal patterns of activity across distinct neuronal populations, with the amplitude of the sinusoid representing the length of the vector and its phase representing the angle of the vector. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">The principles of this circuit may generalize to other brains and to domains beyond navigation where vector operations or reference-frame transformations are required<\/span><\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cheng Lyu, L. F. Abbott &amp; Gaby Maimon. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-021-04067-0\"><strong>Building an allocentric travelling direction signal via vector computation<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<i>Nature<\/i>\u00a0(2021). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-021-04067-0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2021\/12\/211215113221.htm\">News: How a fly&#8217;s brain calculates its position in space\u00a0<\/a>ScienceDaily<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cheng Lyu, L. F. Abbott &amp; Gaby Maimon. Building an allocentric travelling direction signal via vector computation.\u00a0Nature\u00a0(2021). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-021-04067-0 Abstract &#8220;Many behavioural tasks require the manipulation of mathematical vectors, but, outside of computational models1,2,3,4,5,6,7, it is not known how brains perform vector operations. Here we show how the Drosophila central complex, a region implicated in goal-directed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[390,96,346],"tags":[564,750,948],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2517,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516\/revisions\/2517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}