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The neural systems that code for location and facing direction during spatial navigation have been investigated extensively; however, the mechanisms by which these quantities are referenced to external features of the world are not well understood. To address this issue, we examined behavioral priming and functional magnetic resonance imaging activity patterns while human subjects recalled spatial views from a recently learned virtual environment. Behavioral results indicated that imagined location and facing direction were represented during this task, and multivoxel pattern analyses indicated that the retrosplenial complex (RSC) was the anatomical locus of these spatial codes. Critically, in both cases, location and direction were defined on the basis of fixed elements of the local environment and generalized across geometrically similar local environments. These results suggest that RSC anchors internal spatial representations to local topographical features, thus allowing us to stay oriented while we navigate and retrieve from memory the experience of being in a particular place.

Humans and animals use landmarks during wayfinding to determine where they are in the world and to guide their way to their destination. To implement this strategy, known as landmark-based piloting, a navigator must be able to: (i) identify individual landmarks, (ii) use these landmarks to determine their current position and heading, (iii) access long-term knowledge about the spatial relationships between locations and (iv) use this knowledge to plan a route to their navigational goal. Here, we review neuroimaging, neuropsychological and neurophysiological data that link the first three of these abilities to specific neural systems in the human brain. This evidence suggests that the parahippocampal place area is critical for landmark recognition, the retrosplenial/medial parietal region is centrally involved in localization and orientation, and both medial temporal lobe and retrosplenial/medial parietal lobe regions support long-term spatial knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Anchoring the Neural Compass: Coding of Local Spatial Reference Frames in Human Medial Parietal Lobe" that was published in the October 5, 2014 issue is presented.