Medial Parietal Cortex Encodes Perceived Heading Direction in Humans
Open accessAbstract
The ability to encode and update representations of heading direction is crucial for successful navigation. In rats, head-direction cells located within the limbic system alter their firing rate in accordance with the animal's current heading. To date, however, the neural structures that underlie an allocentric or viewpoint-independent sense of direction in humans remain unknown. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure neural adaptation to distinctive landmarks associated with one of four heading directions in a virtual environment. Our experiment consisted of two phases: a “learning phase,” in which participants actively navigated the virtual maze; and a “test phase,” in which participants viewed pairs of images from the maze while undergoing fMRI. We found that activity within the medial parietal cortex—specifically, Brodmann area 31—was modulated by learned heading, suggesting that this region contains neural populations involved in the encoding and retrieval of allocentric heading information in humans. These results are consistent with clinical case reports of patients with acquired lesions of medial posterior brain regions, who exhibit deficits in forming and recalling links between landmarks and directional information. Our findings also help to explain why navigation disturbances are commonly observed in patients with Alzheimer's disease, whose pathology typically includes the cortical region we have identified as being crucial for maintaining representations of heading direction.
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fMRI adaptation is observed in RSC when successively-presented scenes face the same direction.
“fMRI adaptation is observed in RSC when successively-presented scenes face the same direction16”
From Anchoring the neural compass: coding of local spatial reference frames in human medial parietal lobe (2014) · cites this paper as [16]
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- Authors
- Baumann, O., & Mattingley, J. B.
- Affiliations
- The University of Queensland (AU)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2010-09-29
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 39
- Pages
- 12897-12901
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6633521
- OpenAlex
- W2134312825
- Cited by
- 137
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 19 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 10.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Medical Research Council
- National Health and Medical Research Council
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Vestibular and auditory disorders
- Keywords
- heading direction, medial parietal cortex, allocentric navigation, landmark-based navigation, virtual reality navigation, spatial representation, Alzheimer's disease, head direction cells, neural adaptation
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Cues, Female, Humans, Learning, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Memory, Motion Perception, Neurons, Neuropsychological Tests, Orientation, Parietal Lobe, Photic Stimulation, Space Perception, Young Adult
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