‘Bat-nav’ reveals how the brain tracks other animals

The brains navigation system – which keeps track of where we are in space – also monitors the movements of others, experiments in bats and rats suggest. In a study published in Science recently, neuroscientists in Israel pinpoint individual brain cells that seem specialised to track other animals or objects. These cells occur in the same region of the brain – the hippocampus – as cells that are known to map a bats own location. In a second paper, scientists in Japan report finding similar brain activity when rats watched other rats moving.

The unexpected findings deepen insight into the mammalian brains complex navigation system. Bats and rats are social animals that, like people, need to know the locations of other members of their group so that they can interact, learn from each other and move around together. Researchers have already discovered several different types of cell whose signals combine to tell an animal where it is: place cells, for example, fire when animals are in a particular location, whereas other types correspond to speed or head direction, or even act as a kind of compass.

The latest reports mark the first discovery of cells that are attuned to other …read more