Accurate navigation to a desired goal requires consecutive estimates of spatial relationships between the current position and future destination throughout the journey. Although neurons in the hippocampal formation can represent the position of an animal as well as its nearby trajectories^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}, their role in determining the destination of the animal has been questioned^8,9. It is, thus, unclear whether the brain can possess a precise estimate of target location during active environmental exploration. Here we describe neurons in the rat orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) that form spatial representations persistently pointing to the subsequent goal destination of an animal throughout navigation. This destination coding emerges before the onset of navigation, without direct sensory access to a distal goal, and even predicts the incorrect destination of an animal at the beginning of an error trial. Goal representations in the OFC are maintained by destination-specific neural ensemble dynamics, and their brief perturbation at the onset of a journey led to a navigational error. These findings suggest that the OFC is part of the internal goal map of the brain, enabling animals to navigate precisely to a chosen destination that is beyond the range of sensory perception.

准确导航到预期目标需要在整个旅程中连续估计当前位置和未来目的地之间的空间关系。虽然海马结构中的神经元可以代表动物的位置及其附近的轨迹^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7}，但它们在确定动物目的地方面的作用受到质疑^8,9. 因此，尚不清楚大脑是否可以在主动环境探索期间对目标位置进行精确估计。在这里，我们描述了大鼠眶额皮质 (OFC) 中的神经元，这些神经元形成空间表示，在整个导航过程中持续指向动物的后续目标目的地。这种目的地编码出现在导航开始之前，没有直接的感官访问远端目标，甚至在错误试验开始时预测动物的错误目的地。OFC 中的目标表示由特定于目的地的神经集成动力学维持，并且它们在旅程开始时的短暂扰动导致导航错误。这些发现表明，OFC 是大脑内部目标图的一部分，