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On the grid for the rat race The discovery by Edvard Moser and colleagues that rats and mice possess an orientation map of their surroundings, produced and updated by a network of cerebral cortex neurons known as 'grid cells' was one of the most exciting neuroscientific findings in recent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNature (London) Vol. 463; no. 7281; p. 586
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Nature Publishing Group UK 04.02.2010
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
631/378/2571/1696
631/378/2571/2575
authors
Brain
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI10.1038/7281586b

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Summary:On the grid for the rat race The discovery by Edvard Moser and colleagues that rats and mice possess an orientation map of their surroundings, produced and updated by a network of cerebral cortex neurons known as 'grid cells' was one of the most exciting neuroscientific findings in recent years. These cells provide a strikingly periodic representation of self-location. The question naturally arises, does a similar mechanism operate in humans? The answer is provided in a paper by Christian Doeller, Caswell Barry and Neil Burgess in which single-unit recordings of grid cells in freely moving rats were combined with whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in humans navigating within virtual environments. Doeller et al . were able to detect a macroscopic fMRI signal representing a subject's position in a virtual reality environment that met the criteria for defining grid-cell encoding. Thus, humans appear to represent position and support spatial cognition in a manner very like that used by rodents.
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ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/7281586b