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place cells

·July 23, 2025·6 min read

Your Brain Maps the Same Path Differently Every Time

New research shows that our brain’s internal map rewrites itself every time we navigate a familiar environment. Even when mice experienced identical virtual mazes with controlled sensory input, their hippocampal neurons activated in different patterns on each run.

Featured Neuroscience

·January 15, 2025·8 min read

How the Brain Uses Place Cells to Anchor Episodic Memories

Researchers have developed a model explaining how place cells in the hippocampus anchor both spatial and episodic memories. Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex interact with hippocampal cells to create a scaffold, linking memories to specific neural patterns.

Featured Neuroscience

·December 10, 2024·7 min read

How Sleep Shapes Our Brain’s Mental Navigational Maps

A new study reveals how the brain forms cohesive mental maps of spaces and highlights the critical role of sleep in this process. While "place cells" in the hippocampus mark specific locations, weaker spatial cells stitch these points into a comprehensive cognitive map.

Featured Neuroscience

·February 29, 2024·5 min read

Endocannabinoids Play Role in Spatial Navigation

Researchers made a new discovery about how we navigate our environments, pinpointing a brain cell mechanism crucial for spatial orientation. This research reveals that place cells in the hippocampus, essential for creating mental maps of our surroundings, activate and release endocannabinoids to communicate position information.

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·December 22, 2021·5 min read

Neurons in the Olfactory Cortex Link Smells to Places

Neurons in the primary olfactory cortex play a role in encoding spatial maps, a new study reports.

This is a drawing of a mouse on a sail boat

Featured Neuroscience

·October 28, 2021·5 min read

The Goal in Mind: Brain’s Internal Goal Map Helps Animals Precisely Navigate to Chosen Destination

Study reveals a specific neural code for spatial goals, providing evidence for the brain's goal map that guides us to a remote location over space and time.

Featured Neuroscience

·October 18, 2021·5 min read

How the Brain Navigates Cities

Researchers say the brain appears to be wired to calculate not the shortest path, but the "pointiest" path, facing us toward our destination as much as possible.

Featured Neuroscience

·September 3, 2021·4 min read

New Model for Solving Novel Problems Uses Mental Map

The cognitive map allows people to compute on the fly with limited information to solve abstract problems.

This shows a drawing of a brain and computer chip connections

Electrophysiology Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·June 8, 2021·4 min read

First Glimpse of Brains Retrieving Mistaken Memories Observed

Rat study reveals place cells in the hippocampus have the same patterns of activity whether they correctly, or incorrectly recall a memory. However, when the memory is incorrect, the activity begins later and is slower.

Featured Neuroscience

·February 15, 2021·5 min read

Peeking at the Pathfinding Strategies of the Hippocampus

Researchers observed hippocampal place cell changes in animal experiments of cue-poor and cue-rich spatial environments. The findings have implications for the treatment of brain disorders and the development of new AI technologies.