New Delhi: A new study has identified brain activity that helps people avoid getting lost.
The researchers said they were able to detect an internal 'neural compass' in the brain that is used when a person is orienting themselves and navigating through their environment.
The team, including researchers from the University of Birmingham, UK, said these results have implications for understanding diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, in which a person's ability for navigation and direction is often impaired.
“It is very important to keep track of where you are going. Even small mistakes in estimating where you are and what direction you are going in can be disastrous."We know that animals like birds, mice and bats have neural circuitry that keeps them on track, but we know surprisingly little about how the human brain manages this in the real world," the University K Benjamin J. Griffiths said. of Birmingham and first author of the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
For the study, researchers measured electrical activity in the brains of 5 healthy participants, whose movements were monitored as they moved their heads according to signals on separate computer monitors. Electrical signals were measured from the hippocampus and neighboring areas.
In a separate study, researchers monitored electrical signals in the brains of 10 participants with epilepsy-like conditions.All tasks prompted participants to move their heads or sometimes just their eyes, and brain signals from these movements were recorded by an electroencephalograph, the researchers said.
Thus they showed a "finely tuned directional signal" that could be detected just before the head physically changed direction between participants.
"Isolating these signals helps us really focus on how the brain processes navigational information and how these signals work with other signals like visual landmarks.
"Our approach opens up new avenues for exploring these features, with implications for research into neurodegenerative diseases and even improving navigational technologies in robotics and AI," Griffiths said."
The researchers said they were able to detect an internal 'neural compass' in the brain that is used when a person is orienting themselves and navigating through their environment.
The team, including researchers from the University of Birmingham, UK, said these results have implications for understanding diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, in which a person's ability for navigation and direction is often impaired.
“It is very important to keep track of where you are going. Even small mistakes in estimating where you are and what direction you are going in can be disastrous."We know that animals like birds, mice and bats have neural circuitry that keeps them on track, but we know surprisingly little about how the human brain manages this in the real world," the University K Benjamin J. Griffiths said. of Birmingham and first author of the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
For the study, researchers measured electrical activity in the brains of 5 healthy participants, whose movements were monitored as they moved their heads according to signals on separate computer monitors. Electrical signals were measured from the hippocampus and neighboring areas.
In a separate study, researchers monitored electrical signals in the brains of 10 participants with epilepsy-like conditions.All tasks prompted participants to move their heads or sometimes just their eyes, and brain signals from these movements were recorded by an electroencephalograph, the researchers said.
Thus they showed a "finely tuned directional signal" that could be detected just before the head physically changed direction between participants.
"Isolating these signals helps us really focus on how the brain processes navigational information and how these signals work with other signals like visual landmarks.
"Our approach opens up new avenues for exploring these features, with implications for research into neurodegenerative diseases and even improving navigational technologies in robotics and AI," Griffiths said."