The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that the research team led by Sebastien Royer uncovered that place cells in the hippocampus encode spatial information using interchangeably two distinct information processing mechanisms referred to as a rate code and a phase code, somewhat analogue to the number and spatial arrangement of bars in bar codes. In addition, the research team found that parallel neural circuits and information processing mechanisms are used depending on the complexity of the landmarks along the path.