Pingie: HTTP:: Our Brain Creates 039 Maps 039 to Get Around

HTTP:: Our Brain Creates 039 Maps 039 to Get Around
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Scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have recently managed a breakthrough in understanding how the human brain makes sense of the physical world around it. They compare the process to navigating the planet using Google Maps. For a general overview, a default map works. But, when you get down to the details, a specific map of the area needs to be loaded, and the view switched from one map to the other. Apparently, our brains are also able to create multiple, independent maps, which it then uses to make sense of things, AlphaGalileo reports. These internal maps, which scientists at the NTNU Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience have been studying for the past four years, are created via so-called grid cells, in a coordinate system. This enables the human brain to produce not only one, but a multitude of smaller maps, some of which present only the rough details, whereas others are extremely accurate. Accompanying these maps is a very ad!
vanced sorting system, which, no doubt, took its time to evolve over millions of years. “We long wondered if all of the brain’s mapping information was stored in a single map. So we figured out a way to check this,” Dori Derdikman, a postdoctoral researcher at the university, says. In their experiments, the researchers...
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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Our-Brain-Creates-039-Maps-039-to-Get-Around-123641.shtml
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