Introduction
The brain is a very complicated organ that is mainly composed of billions of neurons. Neurons communicate with and transmit signals to and from every area of your body. Electrical impulses generate brain waves, and these signals are electrical impulses. The brain map (also known as a neuro map) is a useful tool for evaluating your brainwaves and identifying ways to enhance communication between different parts of the brain. The brain map can record a window of brain activity, evaluate the data, and see each lobe of the brain and each particular brain wave (Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta).
Understanding The Brain-Mapping in animals regarding the 3-D Structures surprises the Researchers in detail:
Animals’ tidy grid cell activity pattern for traversing flat surfaces becomes more chaotic as they travel across 3D environments. This has ramifications for how we think about cognitive and memory functions. Some researchers have enticed rats to traverse lattice-like mazes as well as other complicated settings in order to learn more about how animals’ brains perceive three-dimensional space. Animals build a mental representation of the world into them as they leap, crawl, fly, and swim through their natural environments – one that they use to get home, obtain food, and identify other important areas of interest. For decades, neuroscientists have been chipping away at the puzzle of how animals accomplish this. An ingenious neural code discovered by researchers while observing the minds of rats under experimental conditions is a critical component of the answer.
However, lab animals inside a cage with a level floor only have to travel in two dimensions, as well as researchers now are discovering that applying those skills to an actual world is fraught with difficulties and dangers. The brain interprets 3D places differently from 2D spaces, using a process that scientists are still trying to figure out.
When Grid Cells Become Three Dimensional
The brain’s navigational system is made up of many kinds of neurons, according to decades of research. Whenever an animal traverses through a recognized place in its surroundings, cells inside the hippocampus fire. When the animal’s head turns in a specific direction, such as north or south, head direction cells activate. Border cells fire when they are a certain distance away from a border.
Grid cells, which are located in the entorhinal cortex, a brain area near the hippocampus that is essential for both spatial navigation as well as memory, are the most interesting. Grid cells are frequently thought of as an exquisite, stable, and apparently infinite coordinate system that allows an animal to monitor exact distances as well as directions as it travels because of the remarkable symmetry, regularity, as well as consistency of their activity. However, since all of the tests were carried out in two-dimensional settings, it’s unclear how grid cells could reflect three-dimensional situations.
Getting Out of the Grid
“Continuous attractor” models, whereby each grid cell tries to activate while inhibiting its neighbors, are often used to explain grid cellular activities and related functions. This results in the hexagonal pattern of regions of local excitation surrounding by discs of inhibition seen in 2D. However, such models do not account for the loss of periodicity in 3 dimensions. They are very set in their ways when it comes to how grid cells are connected and what configurations their firing fields may take. The grid model offers the benefit of focusing on building on traditional attractor networks, path integration, and other theories.
It’s Important to Have Perfect Regularity
But, if global regularity isn’t the defining characteristic of grid cells in all situations, experts have differing views on what is.
Ulanovsky, for example, believes his team discovered the typical spacing between the firing fields of the cells. Jeffery believes it’s the distinct manner the cells fire: while it may not be exactly periodic, it allows the brain to maintain spatial (and possibly more conceptual) representations separate. Grid cells have the capacity to incorporate information regarding movement and velocity, according to Fiete. The loss of structured training in grid cell activity, according to Lisa Giocomo, a neuroscientist from Stanford University, indicates that the cells may be storing factors other than spatial location, such as a visual signal or the position of the animal’s eye as it surveys the surroundings.
Wrapping up
In fact, the findings indicate that grid cells may not only be storing new, non-spatial information, but they may also be playing a larger role in non-spatial processes, such as memory. The hippocampus, which combines streams of knowledge from various brain areas to create representations of previous events and general knowledge, is usually in charge of memory. The entorhinal cortex, as well as its grid cells, provide a few of those streams of data, perhaps giving a spatial dimension for memories.
This raises the idea that other brain areas are also processing memories in tandem — that the stream of this information is complicated and may include neurons other than grid cells that haven’t received as much attention. It also suggests that the other memory processes, such as hippocampal replay and reactivation, may have to be understood in conjunction with the entorhinal cortex as well as grid cells. Moving away from the idea of the periodic hexagonality of grid cells may lead to a slew of new discoveries. The grid cell response’s periodicity has been a boon. Researchers were able to use it to limit their models and direct their search for possible processes and roles. As a result, we may conclude that now the brain has a lot of surprises in store for us. There’s this system that you’re familiar with, and it’s very tidy — and then the brain throws you a curveball.
Sources :
https://gsnews55.blogspot.com/2021/10/new-top-story-on-hacker-news-how_15.html
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-animals-map-3d-spaces-surprises-brain-researchers-20211014/
