Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry Article Date: 06 Aug 2013 - 2:00 PDT
Current ratings for: GPS-like 'grid' cells found in human brain
Scientists rarely have the opportunity to study single cell behavior deep inside a living human brain. But a US team was offered the chance to make human brain recordings in epilepsy patients undergoing treatment that implanted electrodes deep inside their brains. The researchers discovered that humans, like other animals, appear to have a type of brain cell that behaves like a GPS.
Scientists had already discovered that the brains of rodents and nonhuman primates have "grid" cells that help the animals keep track of their relative location when navigating in an unfamiliar environment.
Grid cells send signals to another group of cells called place cells, and they both send signals to the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is important for forming memory. Together, the two groups of cells help make a mental picture of where the animal is in its environment.
But apart from a study published in 2010 that used non-invasive brain scans to suggest grid cells exist in human brains, this latest study is the first to show direct evidence of grid cell activity in human brains.
Joshua Jacobs, who runs a cognitive brain dynamics lab at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, and colleagues write about their findings in this week's online issue of Nature Neuroscience.
Grid cells get their name from the triangular grid pattern they appear to use to represent spatial location. Imagine yourself standing on a patterned floor made of interlocking triangle shapes. As you walk around, you cross over from one triangle to another. Grid cells appear to map such a grid pattern because of the way their activity spikes as you traverse the grid.
This cell behavior, which is distinct from that of other brain cells, allows the brain to keep track of how far you have travelled from a starting point, or from your last turn. This type of navigation is called path integration.
Jacobs told the press:
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GPS-like 'grid' cells found in human brain