Ever wonder how you could lose your way on the freeway, and still find your destination without Google Maps or MapQuest as an aid? Or how a dog with an attention span of only mere minutes can recall the path least travelled, and find its way home, in spite of the baffling sounds and smells around it? Well as it so happens, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel believe that new research reveals that mammals have developed an internal compass that guides our way. And it's not just dogs and humans that have evolved the nifty trick deep within the brain.
Publishing their study earlier this week in the journal Nature, the researchers discovered how brains intrinsically can navigate the body, by using what they call a "3-D neural compass". The study investigated the Egyptian fruit bat and revealed a toroidal shaped grouping of neural cells within the brain that helped the bats differentiate their orientation and the place in a 3-dimensional field.
"Navigation requires a sense of direction ('compass'), which in mammals is thought to be provided by head-direction cells, neurons that discharge when the animal's head points to a specific azimuth" lead researcher of the study, Arseny Finkelstein says. "We predict that conjunctive 3-D head-direction cells might be found also in non-flying mammals that move in complex 3-D environments or that orient their head up/down, such as squirrels, cats, dolphins and primates."
The first to ever record animals in flight like they did, the researchers observed and measured data from the bats as they flew all over and even carried out acrobatics, such as upside-down landings that researchers were fascinated to link to the toroidal shaped neural cells.
"We're the only lab currently able to conduct wireless recordings in flying animals" Finkelstein says. "A tiny device attached to the bats allowed us to monitor the activity of single neurons, even while the animal was freely moving."
Though the researchers believe that the neural compass will certainly be found in other mammals over the course of future research, Finkelstein says that the Egyptian fruit bat species proved to be an effective model organism because of its unique flight patterns and spatial behaviors in the animal kingdom.
"And we don't think our results are specific to bats" Finkelstein says. "Bats and rats are separated by millions of years of evolution. And yet, if you look at the same brain regions of these two species, you find place cells, head-direction cells, and you find grid cells."
"That's why we think this might be relevant for humans too. We think that's one of the exciting elements in neuroscience."
And the discovery may have greater applications to the research of physiology and medicine than many would expect. In fact, Finkelstein and his colleagues may have made the discovery of their careers. This year, after decades of studying the brain's internal navigation systems, three of Finkelstein's colleagues in the field of neuroscience were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, and he may just be next.
