A long-standing hypothesis has been that projections from the central vestibular system back to the vestibular sensory organs (i.e., the efferent vestibular system) mediate adaptive sensory coding during voluntary locomotion. However, direct proof for this idea has been lacking. Using a combination of mathematical modeling and nonlinear analysis, Dr. Kathleen Cullen and colleagues show that afferent encoding is actually identical across passive and active conditions, irrespective of context. Access the full Nature Communications article to learn more.