Cognition Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Cognition, including details on psychology, neuroscience, memory, brain theory.

A metric for the cognitive map: found at last?

Jeffery KJ, Burgess N

Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAP, UK. k.jeffery@ucl.ac.uk

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.

Published 9 January 2006 in Trends Cogn Sci, 10(1): 1-3.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2005-2008 Cognition Research Today. All Rights Reserved.