The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index, and 1 are not checked yet.
A neural heading estimate is compared with an internal goal to guide oriented navigation
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Goal-directed navigation is thought to rely on the activity of head-direction cells, but how this activity guides moment-to-moment actions remains poorly understood. Here we characterize how heading neurons in the Drosophila central complex guide moment-to-moment navigational behavior. We establish an innate, heading-neuron-dependent, tethered navigational behavior where walking flies maintain a straight trajectory along a specific angular bearing for hundreds of body lengths. While flies perform this task, we use chemogenetics to transiently rotate their neural heading estimate and observe that the flies slow down and turn in a direction that aims to return the heading estimate to the angle it occupied before stimulation. These results support a working model in which the fly brain quantitatively compares an internal estimate of current heading with an internal goal heading and uses the sign and magnitude of the difference to determine which way to turn, how hard to turn and how fast to walk forward.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“No statistical methods were used to predetermine sample sizes but our sample sizes are similar to those reported in previous publications23,24,33,34,37,38.”
From Multimodal cue integration and learning in a neural representation of head direction (2025) · cites this paper as [33]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe check wasn’t confident either way, so it gives no verdict — never disputed.
In the citing paper
“Here, behavioral reorientation into the wind is likely mediated by pathways for orientation control that bypass the HD system32,33,44”
From Multimodal cue integration and learning in a neural representation of head direction (2025) · cites this paper as [33]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn the citing paper
“PEN1 neurons relay information about the fly’s angular velocity to EPG neurons, and so micro-stimulating PEN1 neurons causes the head direction system to register a fictive behavioral turn.”
From Neural circuit mechanisms for steering control in walking Drosophila (2025) · cites this paper as Green et al., 2019
In the citing paper
“PEN1 neurons relay information about the fly’s angular velocity to EPG neurons, and so micro-stimulating PEN1 neurons causes the head direction system to register a fictive behavioral turn.”
From Neural circuit mechanisms for steering control in walking Drosophila (2025) · cites this paper as Green et al., 2019
In the citing paper
“Head direction neurons (EPG neurons) (Seelig and Jayaraman, 2015) can influence steering (Giraldo et al., 2018; Green et al., 2019) via central complex neurons that compare head direction signals with internal goal signals (Beetz et al., 2022; Martin et al., 2015; Mussells Pires et al., 2024; Shiozaki et al., 2020; Westeinde et al., 2024).”
From Neural circuit mechanisms for steering control in walking Drosophila (2025) · cites this paper as Green et al., 2019
In the citing paper
“we find that the fly typically executes a compensatory behavioral turn shortly after the EPG bump jump, as reported previously (Green et al., 2019).”
From Neural circuit mechanisms for steering control in walking Drosophila (2025) · cites this paper as Green et al., 2019
In the citing paper
“we found that briefly micro-stimulating PEN1 neurons causes this bump to ‘jump’ to a new location (Green et al., 2019).”
From Neural circuit mechanisms for steering control in walking Drosophila (2025) · cites this paper as Green et al., 2019
In the citing paper
“the brain region that compares the animal’s current heading to an internal goal direction62,63,76,77.”
From Fine-grained descending control of steering in walking Drosophila (2023) · cites this paper as [77]
In the citing paper
“When the central complex commands a large and abrupt change in heading, it also commands a sudden decrease in forward velocity62,77”
From Fine-grained descending control of steering in walking Drosophila (2023) · cites this paper as [77]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Fiji: an open-source platform for biological-image analysis
Schindelin, J., Arganda-Carreras, I., Frise, E., Kaynig, V., Longair, M., Pietzsch, T., Preibisch, S., Rueden, C., Saalfeld, S., Schmid, B., et al. (2012) · Nature Methods · doi:10.1038/nmeth.2019 · Cited by 66,890
Ultrasensitive fluorescent proteins for imaging neuronal activity
Chen, T.-W., Wardill, T. J., Sun, Y., Pulver, S. R., Renninger, S. L., Baohan, A., Schreiter, E. R., Kerr, R. A., Orger, M. B., Jayaraman, V., et al. (2013) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature12354 · Cited by 6,474
Taube, J., Muller, R., & Ranck, J. (1990) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.10-02-00420.1990 · Cited by 1,809
A GAL4-Driver Line Resource for Drosophila Neurobiology
Jenett, A., Rubin, G. M., Ngo, T.-T. B., Shepherd, D., Murphy, C., Dionne, H., Pfeiffer, B. D., Cavallaro, A., Hall, D., Jeter, J., et al. (2012) · Cell Reports · doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2012.09.011 · Cited by 1,449
Zhang, K. (1996) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.16-06-02112.1996 · Cited by 1,001
Homing by path integration in a mammal
Mittelstaedt, M.-L., & Mittelstaedt, H. (1980) · Die Naturwissenschaften · doi:10.1007/bf00450672 · Cited by 728
Neural dynamics for landmark orientation and angular path integration
Seelig, J. D., & Jayaraman, V. (2015) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature14446 · Cited by 718
Path integration in desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis
Müller, M., & Wehner, R. (1988) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.85.14.5287 · Cited by 677
Visual Navigation in Insects: Coupling of Egocentric and Geocentric Information
Wehner, R., Michel, B., & Antonsen, P. (1996) · Journal of Experimental Biology · doi:10.1242/jeb.199.1.129 · Cited by 634
Nern, A., Pfeiffer, B. D., & Rubin, G. M. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1506763112 · Cited by 584
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Hulse, B. K., Haberkern, H., Franconville, R., Turner-Evans, D., Takemura, S.-Y., Wolff, T., Noorman, M., Dreher, M., Dan, C., Parekh, R., et al. (2021) · eLife · doi:10.7554/elife.66039 · Cited by 392
The insect central complex and the neural basis of navigational strategies
Honkanen, A., Adden, A., da Silva Freitas, J., & Heinze, S. (2019) · Journal of Experimental Biology · doi:10.1242/jeb.188854 · Cited by 238
Building an allocentric travelling direction signal via vector computation
Lyu, C., Abbott, L. F., & Maimon, G. (2022) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04067-0 · Cited by 215
Self-citationSensorimotor experience remaps visual input to a heading-direction network
Fisher, Y. E., Lu, J., D’Alessandro, I., & Wilson, R. I. (2019) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1772-4 · Cited by 165
Sun Navigation Requires Compass Neurons in Drosophila
Giraldo, Y. M., Leitch, K. J., Ros, I. G., Warren, T. L., Weir, P. T., & Dickinson, M. H. (2018) · Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.07.002 · Cited by 161
Metadata
- Authors
- Green, J., Vijayan, V., Mussells Pires, P., Adachi, A., & Maimon, G.
- Affiliations
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
- Corresponding author
- Maimon, Gaby
- Venue
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2019-07-22
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1460-1468
- ISSN
- 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1546-1726
- PMC
- PMC7688015
- OpenAlex
- W2963869135
- Cited by
- 137
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 13
- FWCI
- 7.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- McKnight Foundation
- Leon Levy Foundation
- Nature
- National Institutes of Health (NIH P40OD018537, P40OD018537)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (DP2DA035148)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS104934)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurobiology and Insect Physiology Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Keywords
- heading estimation, head direction cells, goal-directed navigation, Drosophila, central complex, turning behavior
- MeSH terms
- Orientation, Spatial, Animals, Brain, Cues, Drosophila, Female, Neurons, Spatial Navigation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
