Washington DC, Feb. 8 -- Our sense of direction is essential for navigating the world around us. It serves as the brain's internal compass, guiding us in the right direction and, more significantly, prompting us to reverse course when we're going the wrong way.

Yet despite a large body of research on how navigation works in the brain, scientists still lack a clear understanding of how this internal compass directly guides behavior.

Now, a study conducted in fruit flies and led by researchers at Harvard Medical School offers new insights into how two distinct brain regions -- the seat of the compass and the steering center -- communicate during navigation.

The findings are published in Nature.

In the study, researchers examined the bra...