City Map with Place Cell Activations (IMAGE)
Caption
Using a video game in which people navigate through a virtual town delivering objects to specific locations, a team of neuroscientists from the University of Pennsylvania and Freiburg University has discovered how brain cells that encode spatial information form "geotags" for specific memories and are activated immediately before those memories are recalled. Their work shows how spatial information is incorporated into memories and why remembering an experience can quickly bring to mind other events that happened in the same place. This overhead map of the virtual city is overlaid with the areas where a participants place cells were activated. Different colors represent different cells, showing how these neurons help track spatial information and memories.
Credit
University of Pennsylvania
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