How does the hippocampus know where you are when all it receives is egocentric sensory input? Computational neuroscientist Neil Burgess explains how boundary vector cells provide the missing link , translating distances to environmental features into the allocentric place code that underpins spatial memory and navigation. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Neil Burgess joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott at the BCBT summer school to present his boundary vector cell model of hippocampal place cell firing. The model proposes that place cells receive their spatial tuning from a population of cells, found in subiculum and entorhinal cortex, that each encode the distance and allocentric direction to extended environmental boundaries. A place field emerges as a thresholded sum of these boundary inputs , a simple m ...