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In the 1970s, scientists discovered that certain neurons in the hippocampus—an area of the brain involved in learned and memory—would fire in response to particular locations. They were called “place cells,” explains Charlotte Boccara, a researcher at the University of Oslo. “They were deemed important for spatial representation . . . a bit like the ‘You Are Here’ signal’ on a map.”
But it wasn’t until 2005 that researchers discovered the brain’s grid cells, which they believed function as that map. These cells, found adjacent to the hippocampus in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC), self-organize into a pattern of hexagons that serve as coordinates to help animals make sense of their surroundings and the signals from our place cells.
A pair of studies published today (March 28) in Science suggests that this map may not be as rigid as once thought. The experiments demonstrated that, in ...
