All parts of the brain › Functions › Navigation

What part of the brain controls navigation and sense of direction?

No single part holds your sense of direction. The hippocampus holds place cells that fire at one spot; the entorhinal cortex, the front of the parahippocampal gyrus, holds grid cells that tile space like a map; head direction cells in the thalamus and the cingulate gyrus’s retrosplenial cortex act like a compass; the parietal lobe tracks space around your body. [1][2][3]

The 3D brain needs JavaScript. The list of parts still says what each one does for navigation.

Lit: whole parts; region borders not drawn.

Slice

All 5 parts are lit together. Drag to turn, pinch or scroll to zoom, tap a part on the brain or a name in the list to focus it; .

The entorhinal cortex is a region on a lit gyrus, not a separate shape. The 3D model draws only whole gyri, so the gyrus that holds each area is lit; the area’s exact border is not drawn.

The retrosplenial cortex is a region on the cingulate gyrus, not a separate shape. The 3D model has no shape for it, so the whole cingulate gyrus is lit; the region’s exact border is not drawn.

Navigation: 5 parts lit

Hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, parietal lobe, cingulate gyrus and thalamus. Tap one to see where it is and what it does.

The parts and their roles

Holds place cells, neurons that fire when an animal is at one particular spot (the cell’s place field); together they are thought to form a cognitive map of the surroundings. First found in rats in 1971, they have since been reported in bats, monkeys and humans. [1] Where is the hippocampus?
Its front part is the entorhinal cortex, home of the grid cells (below); further back, its parahippocampal place area becomes highly active when people view scenes and landscapes and plays an important role in encoding and recognising them. [4][2] Where is the parahippocampal gyrus?
Encodes space relative to your own body (a self-centred, egocentric frame), turning what the senses report into coordinates for movement and updating where the body is within its surroundings. [5] Where is the parietal lobe?
Holds the retrosplenial cortex (below): in human brain scans (fMRI) it is active during navigation, imagining scenes and recalling events, and it responds most to permanent, non-moving landmarks; in rats about 8.5% of its neurons are head direction cells. [6] Where is the cingulate gyrus?
Its anterior dorsal and lateral dorsal nuclei hold head direction cells, which fire only while the head points one way and are thought to underlie the sense of direction; they depend on the balance (vestibular) system, not on the hippocampus. [3] Where is the thalamus?

Named areas on the lit gyri

Entorhinal cortex, on the : The front part of the parahippocampal gyrus, which holds grid cells: neurons that fire at regular points as an animal crosses an open space, their firing spots forming a grid of equilateral triangles, so together they encode position, distance and direction. It provides by far the largest input to the hippocampus. [2]
The retrosplenial cortex, on the : The retrosplenial region of the cingulate gyrus (Brodmann areas 26, 29 and 30), immediately behind the splenium, the back end of the corpus callosum. Lying between the hippocampus and the parietal lobe, it may translate between self-centred and world-centred (allocentric) views of space. [7][6]

How they work together

Each cell type answers one question: place cells (hippocampus) where am I, grid cells (entorhinal cortex) how far and which way have I moved, head direction cells (thalamus, retrosplenial and entorhinal cortex) which way am I facing. The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to John O’Keefe for place cells and to May-Britt and Edvard Moser for grid cells. [1][2][3]
When London taxi drivers recalled complex routes around the city in a brain scan, only the right hippocampus became active, which suggests it is used for navigating large-scale spaces. [5]
The parietal lobe works in self-centred terms (to my left, ahead of me), while the hippocampus’s place cells work in world-centred ones (by the station); the retrosplenial cortex, between them, may translate one into the other. [5][6]
Head direction cells keep the same preferred directions relative to each other even when the animal is moved to another room, as if the network held one stable compass heading; some fire up to 95 ms before the head actually turns. [3]
Honest limit: these are networks seen in animal recordings and human brain scans, not single centres. Place, grid and head direction cells were mapped mainly with electrodes in rats; in people most of the evidence is imaging, and the retrosplenial cortex’s exact contribution has been hard to pin down. [1][2][6]

Spatial memory, the memory needed to plan a route and recall where things are, is one form of memory: the memory page lights the same hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus for facts and events. [5][8] What part of the brain controls memory?

Sources

Facts describe anatomy and normal function only. A part lit here takes part in navigation; it does not do it alone, and it does other jobs too. The 3D model is the adult male BodyParts3D brain (credits and licence); on it the brainstem includes the midbrain, pons and medulla, so lighting the brainstem lights all three.