Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

How a fly’s neural compass adapts to an ever-changing world

Two studies in flies reveal the mechanism by which the brain’s directional system learns to align information about self-orientation with environmental landmarks — a process crucial for accurate navigation.
  1. Malcolm G. Campbell

    1. Malcolm G. Campbell is in the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA, and in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Lisa M. Giocomo

    1. Lisa M. Giocomo is in the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

As everyone knows, a good sense of direction is needed to successfully navigate the world. In mammals, this ‘sense’ involves neurons called head-direction cells. Each such cell becomes most active when the animal faces a particular direction relative to landmarks in its environment. Together, the cells’ activity indicates which direction the animal is facing in at any given moment. In 2015, it emerged that fruit flies, which are much easier than mammals to study experimentally, have strikingly similar cells, called heading neurons1. Writing in Nature, Fisher et al.2 and Kim et al.3 now build on this discovery to tackle a decades-old problem: how does this type of neuron respond to the locations of landmarks in a manner that is stable enough to be reliable, but flexible enough to allow adaptation to new environments?

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 576, 42-43 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03443-1

References

  1. Seelig, J. D. & Jayaraman, V. Nature 521, 186–191 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Fisher, Y. E., Lu, J., D’Alessandro, I. & Wilson, R. I. Nature 576, 121–125 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Kim, S. S. K., Hermundstad, A. M., Romani, S., Abbott, L. F. & Jayaraman, V. Nature 576, 126–131 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Strauss, R., Schuster, S. & Götz, K. G. J. Exp. Biol. 200, 1281–1296 (1997).

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Wehner, R. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 29, 277–298 (1984).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

  • Research Associate - Metabolism

    Houston, Texas (US)

    Baylor College of Medicine (BCM)

  • Postdoc Fellowships

    Train with world-renowned cancer researchers at NIH? Consider joining the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at the National Cancer Institute

    Bethesda, Maryland

    NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI)

  • Faculty Recruitment, Westlake University School of Medicine

    Faculty positions are open at four distinct ranks: Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor, and Chair Professor.

    Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Westlake University

  • PhD/master's Candidate

    PhD/master's Candidate    Graduate School of Frontier Science Initiative, Kanazawa University is seeking candidates for PhD and master's students i...

    Japan (JP)

    Kanazawa University

  • Senior Research Assistant in Human Immunology (wet lab)

    Senior Research Scientist in Human Immunology, high-dimensional (40+) cytometry, ICS and automated robotic platforms.

    Boston, Massachusetts (US)

    Boston University Atomic Lab

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links