Zhengang Lu and Russell Epstein, from the University of Pennsylvania, led a study to explore how people maintain their sense of direction while navigating naturalistic, virtual reality cities.

As reported in their JNeurosci paper, the researchers collected neuroimaging data while 15 participants performed a taxi-driving task in a virtual reality city. Two brain regions represented a forward-facing direction as people moved around. This neural signal was consistent across variations of the city with different visual features.

The signal was also consistent across different phases of the task (i.e., picking up a passenger versus driving a passenger to their drop-off location) and various locations in the city. Additional analyses suggest that these brain regions represent a broad range of facing directions by keeping track of direction relative to the north–south axis of the environment.

According to the researchers, these findings suggest that these brain regions may serve as a neural compass.

Epstein says, “Losing your sense of direction is something that can happen in neurodegenerative diseases, so continuing to explore the function of these two brain regions may help with early detection or monitoring progression of these diseases. We’re also interested in understanding how people navigate using both visual and internal cues—this would relate to the challenges faced by people with impaired vision.”