UCL News



18 December 2014


Homing signal in the brain





Dr Martin Chadwick

“This type of 'homing signal' has been thought to exist for many years, but until now it has remained purely speculation,” explains Dr Hugo Spiers (UCL Experimental Psychology), who led the study. “Studies on London cab drivers have shown that the first thing they do when they work out a route is calculate which direction they need to head in. We now know that the entorhinal cortex is responsible for such calculations and the quality of signals from this region seem to determine how good someone’s navigational skills will be.”


“In this simple test, we were looking to see which areas of the brain were active when participants were considering different directions,” says Dr Spiers. “We were surprised to see that the strength and consistency of brain signals from the entorhinal region noticeably influenced people’s performance in such a basic task. We now need to investigate the effect in more complex navigational tasks, but I would expect the differences in entorhinal activity to have a larger impact on more complex tasks.


The entorhinal region is one of the first parts of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease, so the findings may also help to explain why people start to get lost in the early stages of the disease. The researchers hope to develop their simple simulation task so that it might be used to aid early diagnosis and monitor the progression of the disease.

Dr John Isaac, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust said: “Neuroscientists have made huge advances in our understanding of how we navigate space, widely recognised after this year’s Nobel Prizes, and this research is yet another step forward. Why some people are better navigators than others is intrinsically interesting, but it also helps us explain the processes that go wrong in people with degenerative brain disorders such as dementia. An estimated 850,000 people are living with dementia in the UK, many of whom suffer deterioration in their navigational skills, leaving them lost and confused.”



  • The entorhinal region of the brain found to be responsible for our 'homing signals' (Courtesy of Hugo Spiers, UCL)