{"id":41,"date":"2003-09-23T22:36:21","date_gmt":"2003-09-23T22:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:34:07","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:34:07","slug":"using-your-brain-to-get-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"using your brain to get around"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Boston can be a confusing place to drive, so thank  goodness you&#8217;ve got all sorts of different cells in your brain to help  you navigate your way. In a study published in the Sept. 11 <em>Nature,<\/em> Michael J. Kahana of Brandeis University in Waltham and his colleagues  had volunteers play a taxi-based computer game in which subjects had to  pick up passengers and drop them off at various locations in a virtual  city.<!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Monitoring the volunteers&#8217; brains as they played the game, the  researchers identified distinct cells that helped the participants  determine where they are (&#8220;place&#8221; cells), what they see (&#8220;view&#8221; cells),  and what they are looking for (&#8220;goal&#8221; cells). They found that place  cells were located primarily in a part of the brain called the  hippocampus and that view cells were concentrated in the parahippocampal  region. Cells throughout the brain&#8217;s frontal and temporal lobes  responded to the volunteer&#8217;s navigational goals. The findings help shed  light on how the brain forms spatial maps of the environment to help us  get from place to place.<\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 9\/23\/2003.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boston can be a confusing place to drive, so thank goodness you&#8217;ve got all sorts of different cells in your brain to help you navigate your way. In a study published in the Sept. 11 Nature, Michael J. Kahana of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=41\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1138,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/1138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}