Plasticity is a neural phenomenon in which experience induces long-lasting changes to neuronal circuits and is at the center of most neurobiological theories of learning and memory. However, too much plasticity is maladaptive and must be balanced with substrate stability. Area CA3 of the hippocampus provides such a balance via hemispheric…

Orientation, the spatial organization of animal behavior, is an essential faculty of animals. Bacteria and lower animals such as insects exhibit taxis, innate orientation behavior, directly toward or away from a directional cue. Organisms can also orient themselves at a specific angle relative to the cues. In this study, using…

Learning to navigate toward a goal is an essential skill. Place learning is thought to rely on the ability of animals to associate the location of a goal with surrounding environmental cues. Using the Morris water maze, a task popularly used to examine place learning, we demonstrate that distal cues provide animals with distance and directional…