An Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus), the species in which Finkelstein et al. discovered new head-direction neurons that form 3-D neural compasses used to represent spatial orientation.YOSSI YOVELBats possess a complex neural compass that tracks their movements as they expertly crawl or fly through their environment, according to a study published this week (December 3) in Nature. Arseny Finkelstein, a PhD student at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, and colleagues used a newly developed tracking device to monitor the head angles of naturally behaving Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) while recording electrical impulses from single brain cells.
Finkelstein told The Scientist that acrobatic bats were ideal models to examine in search of a complex, mental compass. “Because there are such masters of 3-D space, we saw that if we want to start understanding and try to analyze the neural components of the 3-D compass, we should start with animals that we know for sure have it.”
The researchers discovered that the bats have the head-direction sensing cells—which respond to directionality in the horizontal plane, or azimuth—scientists discovered three decades ago in rodents. But the team also found new types orientation cells: ones that responded to pitch, or vertical orientation, roll, or tilt to the left or right, plus cells that responded to combinations of those orientations. All of these cells combine to ...
