GPS Exists In Your Brain Already

Biomedical engineers from Drexel University, University Of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson University and UCLA have identified a new type of cell in your brain that helps humans keep track of their relative location when navigating in an unfamiliar environment. What this research indicates is that there's a natural GPS programmed right inside our brains. These cells appear in the grid pattern, and hence derive the name 'grid cells', are distinct inside human brain. Their activation represents multiple spatial locations. These cells allow the brain to keep track of how far you're from your start point or how far you've come since your last turn. It's called "Path Integration".

slide

Dr. Joshua Jacobs, assistant professor at Drexel University says that it's critical that grid pattern is so consistent because it shows how people can keep track of their location even in new environments with inconsistent layouts. Jacobs and his team studied brain recordings of epilepsy patients with electrodes implemented deep inside their brains as a part of the treatment. Their work is being published in the latest edition of Nature Neuroscience.

Over 14 participants played a video game that challenged them to navigate in the virtual environment. They had to navigate from a point to another to retrieve objects and then recall where the objects were originally located. The research team closely monitored the moves taken by the participants and recorded the activity of individual neurons.

This latest discovery will help shed light on the part of the brain that gets affected first in Alzeimer's Disese.

Via: #-Link-Snipped-#

Replies

  • Jeffrey Arulraj
    Jeffrey Arulraj
    Well Superior creation to all creation in this world is man Nothing else to say

    Man can't be outdone and outlasted in any criteria in the recent future
  • Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    Man is the best machine ever made as our friend said.This discovery can be utilized in many positive ways as our big k told.
    Can we recover the data stored in our brain to picture or text format?
  • Nayan Goenka
    Nayan Goenka
    This is completely true. If you play video games and you are on a mission somewhere, if you fail, you die and respawn at some earlier saved location. And you can easily reach the previous attained progress without much efforts. Your brain learns it all by itself. And not only video games, if you drive at unknown places, you can remember your way back home easily. You mark landmarks to navigate in that case.

You are reading an archived discussion.

Related Posts

Those of you planning to discard your landline connections - hold on! If you thought those old telephone lines are obsolete, then we've a news for you. Alcatel-Lucent has demonstrated...
WeChat version 5.0 has been launched. It may not be available in your country as of yet, but App Store in China seems to be the first in the lot...
Indian Railways will soon have the AC coaches powered by solar energy. The Integral Coach Factory at Chennai has joined hands with IIT Madras to design coaches that will use...
This is arguably the worst taekwondo demo ever. Check it out for yourself -
hi friends, i have a problems with the waveforms of single phase half wave rectifier with r ,rl,rc loads etc.... i didnt understood properly please guide me