DURHAM, United Kingdom Just like a car, scientists say the brain contains cells which act like a GPS. It turns out, we also have an odometer in our brain too. Researchers from Durham University in England say they’ve discovered a new “distance sensitive” brain cell. Their study finds these cells take note of how we far travel during trips and can record the locations of pertinent objects and landmarks along the way.
Some people are far better at directions and finding their way than others, but everyone’s brain contains a number of “GPS-like” brain cells responsible for mapping out places we’ve already seen in the mind’s eye. These cells, for example, remember your office’s break room layout or your favorite route to take back from the mall. The existence of these cells isn’t breaking news, but these newly discovered
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A wire thinner than a human hair designed to navigate tiny blood vessels in the brain has been built by scientists.
The tool will allow doctors to access parts of the body that existing methods can not reach as the capillaries are too narrow.
Swiss researchers developed the tool which uses the flow of a patient s blood to create a smooth path through winding vessels, reducing pressure on the walls and lowering the risk of perforation.
It is hoped the technique could usher in a new frontier in neurological therapeutics as doctors can get deeper into the brain and nervous system than ever before.
Discovery reveals new type of brain cell sensitive to distance and direction of objects
The existence of GPS-like brain cells, which can store maps of the places we ve been, like our kitchen or holiday destination, was already widely known, but this discovery shows there is also a type of brain cell sensitive to the distance and direction of objects that can store their locations on these maps.
The research, led by Dr Steven Poulter and Dr Colin Lever from Durham University, and co-directed by Dr Thomas Wills from the University of Central London (UCL), found that Vector Trace cells can track how far we have travelled and remember where things are, which are added to our memory map of the places we have been.
Vector Trace cells are a novel type of neuron (also known as nerve cell).
Neurons carry electrical impulses from one place to another, transmitting information through electrical and chemical signals.
Vector Trace cells encode combined distances and directions to objects, as well as memory for the presence of objects recently seen, but now absent. It looks like Vector Trace cells connect to creative brain networks which help us to plan our actions and imagine complex scenarios in our mind s eye, said study co-author Dr Colin Lever at the University of Durham. Vector trace cells acting together likely allow us to recreate the spatial relationships between ourselves and objects, and between the objects in a scene, even when those objects are not directly visible to us.