PIXABAY, GERALT
Studies in rats and mice suggest that in order to maintain an updated internal map of an animal’s position in the world, the brain needs to constantly integrate information about its context, borders, direction, space, and speed. Neurons representing each of these dimensions have now been identified thanks to a study published today (July 15) in Nature, which describes a unique population of “speed cells,” the activity of which mirrors the speeds of running and walking rats.
“The faster the animal walks, the faster the cells fire,” said study coauthor Edvard Moser, a neuroscientist at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who last year shared the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for the identification of grid ...
