{"id":3305,"date":"2026-10-09T10:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T00:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/?p=3305"},"modified":"2026-10-09T10:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T00:49:14","slug":"how-to-design-a-split-attractor-for-rapidly-writing-a-navigational-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/?p=3305","title":{"rendered":"How to design a split attractor for rapidly writing a navigational goal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Aaron J. Lanz, Nicholas D. Kathman, Emily Hao, Bard Ermentrout &amp; Katherine I. Nagel. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11144-9\"><strong>A split attractor design for rapidly writing a navigational goal<\/strong><\/a>. Nature (2026). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-026-11144-9<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\nAbstract<br \/>\n&#8220;<strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Recurrent attractor networks are widely thought to form the basis of working memory<\/span><\/strong>1,2,3, but <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>how they can be rapidly switched on and off is unclear<\/strong><\/span>4,5,6,7. Here <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">we investigate stability and switching in a recurrent circuit of the fly navigation centre<\/span><\/strong>8. h\u2206K and PFG neurons are recurrently connected in a ring structure and exhibit shared persistent bump activity that turns on with odour and terminates at the end of a goal-directed run. Using whole-cell recordings, we show that persistence in h\u2206K depends on recurrence, and that h\u2206K receives slow recurrent excitation and fast inhibition from its synaptic partners. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Computational modelling reveals that these synaptic dynamics yield persistent attractor dynamics over a range of synaptic strengths<\/span><\/strong>. Next we examine the mechanisms of rapid switching. We find that whereas both populations show similar activity during runs, they become decoupled during turns and rest. We can reproduce these differential dynamics in our model by using inhibition to dynamically uncouple activity in h\u2206K from PFG. When h\u2206K is inhibited, PFG neurons follow their inputs from the compass system; when h\u2206K is disinhibited, recurrent interactions lock this input into place, forming a heading memory. Consistent with this model, we find that inhibitory inputs onto h\u2206K increase during turns and are suppressed during odour and goal-directed runs. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Our work reveals how disinhibition can serve as a gate to rapidly write an ongoing measurement to a recurrent circuit<\/span><\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Aaron J. Lanz, Nicholas D. Kathman, Emily Hao, Bard Ermentrout &amp; Katherine I. Nagel. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11144-9\"><strong>A split attractor design for rapidly writing a navigational goal<\/strong><\/a>. Nature (2026). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-026-11144-9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aaron J. Lanz, Nicholas D. Kathman, Emily Hao, Bard Ermentrout &amp; Katherine I. Nagel. A split attractor design for rapidly writing a navigational goal. Nature (2026). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-026-11144-9 Abstract &#8220;Recurrent attractor networks are widely thought to form the basis of working memory1,2,3, but how they can be rapidly switched on and off is unclear4,5,6,7. Here we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96,346],"tags":[277,931,148,1523],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305"}],"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=3305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3306,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions\/3306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}