Jeffery Kathryn J, Burgess Neil
Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAP, UK.
Trends Cogn Sci. 2006 Jan;10(1):1-3. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2005.11.002. Epub 2005 Nov 23.
A network of brain areas collectively represent location, but the underlying nature of this "cognitive map" has remained elusive. A recent study reports that the activity patterns of some entorhinal cortical neurons form a remarkably regular array of evenly spaced peaks across the surface of the environment. These "grid cells" might be the basis of a metric used for calculating position, and their discovery could greatly advance our understanding of how navigational computations are performed.
