spatial navigation
neurophilosophy | June 30, 2010FOR most of us, the ability to navigate our environment is largely dependent on the sense of vision. We use visual information to note the location of landmarks, and to identify and negotiate obstacles. These visual cues also enable us to keep track of our movements, by monitoring how our position changes relative to landmarks and, when possible, our starting point and final destination. All of this information is combined to generate a cognitive map of the surroundings, on which successful navigation of that environment later on depends.
Despite the importance of vision for navigation,…
neurophilosophy | January 27, 2010HOW does the brain encode the spatial representations which enable us to successfully navigate our environment? Four decades of research has identified four cell types in the brains of mice and rats which are known to be involved in these processes: place cells, grid cells, head direction cells and, most recently, border cells. Although the functions of most of these cell types are well characterized in rodents, it remains unclear whether they are also found in humans. A new functional neuroimaging study, by researchers from University College London, published online in the journal Nature,…
neurophilosophy | October 18, 2009
USING an inventive new method in which mice run through a virtual reality environment based on the video game Quake, researchers from Princeton University have made the first direct measurements of the cellular activity associated with spatial navigation. The method will allow for investigations of the neural circuitry underlying navigation, and should lead to a better understanding of how spatial information is encoded at the cellular level.
In mice, spatial navigation involves at least four different cell types located in the hippocampus and surrounding regions. Place cells increase…