New ‘GPS’ neuron in human brain found

Scientists have identified a new ‘GPS’ neuron, a discovery that may open up new treatment strategies for people with impaired sense of navigation such as Alzheimer’s patients. “This seems to be a new type of neuron, which we have informally dubbed the ‘neighbourhood cell’. This neuron seems to enable the brain to specifically differentiate between distinct segments (neighbourhoods) of the environment,” said Jeroen Bos, researcher at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) in the Netherlands.

Researchers investigated how large scale navigational knowledge is coded within the brain and whether this process indeed occurs in different structures within the temporal lobe. They trained rats to perform a visually guided task in a figure-8 maze consisting of two loops that overlap in the middle lane. During the experiment, researchers measured electrical activity in the brain by using a novel instrument which allowed them to simultaneously record groups of neurons from four different areas.

They recorded from the perirhinal cortex, hippocampus and two sensory areas. Recordings from the perirhinal cortex revealed sustained activity patterns. The level of electrical activity clearly rose and fell depending on the segment the rats were in and persisted throughout that entire segment, researchers said. They found a pronounced difference between the …read more