Researchers have discovered the mechanistic steps underlying a new type of synaptic plasticity called behavioral timescale synaptic plasticity (BTSP). The study reveals how the entorhinal cortex (EC) sends instructive signals to the hippocampus -- the brain region critical for spatial navigation, memory encoding, and consolidation -- and directs it to specifically re-organize the location and activity of a specific subset of its neurons to achieve altered behavior in response to its changing environment and spatial cues.