Neuroscience

What rats in a maze can teach us about our sense of direction

London's taxi drivers have to pass an exam in which they are asked to name the shortest route between any two places within six miles of Charing Cross – an area with more than 60,000 roads. We know from brain scans that ...

Neuroscience

Brain scan reveals out-of-body illusion

The feeling of being inside one's own body is not as self-evident as one might think. In a new study from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, neuroscientists created an out-of-body illusion in participants placed inside a brain ...

Neuroscience

Study highlights brain cells' role in navigating environment

A new Dartmouth College study sheds light on the brain cells that function in establishing one's location and direction. The findings contribute to our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying our abilities to successfully ...

Neuroscience

Researchers find the missing part of brain's 'internal compass'

If you have taken a walk and would like to return home you need to have an idea of where you are in relation to your destination. To do this, you need to know which way you are facing and also in which direction home lies. ...

Neuroscience

The brain's 'inner GPS' gets dismantled

Imagine being able to recognize your car as your own but never being able to remember where you parked it. Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have induced this all-too-common human experience ...

Neuroscience

Activity in dendrites is critical in memory formation

Why do we remember some things and not others? In a unique imaging study, two Northwestern University researchers have discovered how neurons in the brain might allow some experiences to be remembered while others are forgotten. ...

Neuroscience

Explainer: What happens in the hippocampus?

This year's Nobel Prize in medicine recognises work on "cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain." Those cells are found in the hippocampus. It is just one tiny part of the brain, but this structure gets at ...

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