Navigation occurs through a continuum of space and time. The hippocampus is known to encode the immediate position of moving animals. However, active navigation, especially at high speeds, may require representing navigational information beyond the present moment. Using wireless electrophysiological recordings in freely flying bats, we demonstrate that neural activity in area CA1 predominantly encodes nonlocal spatial information up to meters away from the bat’s present position. This spatiotemporal representation extends both forward and backward in time, with an emphasis on future locations, and is found during both random exploration and goal-directed navigation. The representation of position thus extends along a continuum, with each moment containing information about past, present, and future, and may provide a key mechanism for navigating along self-selected and remembered paths.

导航发生在空间和时间的连续体中。众所周知，海马体对移动动物的直接位置进行编码。然而，主动导航，尤其是在高速下，可能需要表示超出当前时刻的导航信息。我们在自由飞行的蝙蝠中使用无线电生理记录，证明 CA1 区域的神经活动主要编码远离蝙蝠当前位置的非局部空间信息。这种时空表示在时间上向前和向后扩展，强调未来的位置，并且在随机探索和目标导向导航中都可以找到。因此，位置的表示沿着一个连续体延伸，每个时刻都包含关于过去、现在和未来的信息，