From behaviour to brain dynamics

It is well accepted that medium to long range navigation requires the use of an external directional reference i.e. a compass. Cheung et al (2007) recently demonstrated through theory and simulation the quantitative significance of the compass. It was shown that navigating agents using and not using a compass could be differentiated on the basis of the population behaviour. In the current work, theory and simulation results will be presented on ways to characterize individual paths on the basis of whether the system was using an external directional reference. Thus it is demonstrated that important information concerning the neural input used by a navigating animal may be inferred probabilistically from its behaviour