The neural speedometer of our brain. Free Technical Library News

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The neural speedometer of our brain

29.07.2015

Researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, May-Britt and Edvard Moser (May-Britt, Edvard Moser) found speed neurons in the rat brain - their activity changed depending on how fast the rat moved.

Back in 2005, scientists found a group of nerve cells in the entorhinal cortex that quickly became known as the brain's GPS systems. These cells fire in turn as the individual moves through space—that is, neurons can be said to mark areas of territory. Their peculiarity is that such neurons turn on according to a special scheme, breaking the space into hexagonal fragments, making it look like a huge lattice. Hence their name - grid-neurons, or lattice neurons. The entorhinal cortex itself plays a big role in the formation of spatial memory and declarative memory (about events and objects that we saw with our own eyes).

But, as is easy to understand, the work of cells of spatial orientation depends on the speed with which the individual moves through the landscape. Obviously, the operation of the neural GPS system must be corrected by some kind of speed sensors. On the other hand, terrain mapping also depends on the surrounding context, the direction of movement, the presence or absence of boundaries. Therefore, finding neurons that would detect speed was a very difficult task: their activity in the brain of experimental animals had to be separated from the activity of others that responded to a change in direction, context, etc. In addition, a freely moving animal often stops, and during stop time, according to the authors of the work, the brain - at least that part of it that is responsible for orientation in space - generally switches to a different mode of operation.

Neuroscientists used an ingenious device similar to a car without a bottom: the rat in it could only move in one direction and at the same speed as the device itself was moving. The "car" was programmed to change speed, but never stop during those 4 meters that he "passed" along with the rat. As a result, it was possible to find cells whose activity clearly changed with acceleration or deceleration of movement, and they worked even if the animal was moving in the dark. In this, they are similar to spatial grid neurons, which work regardless of the environment, delineating the surrounding space regardless of what is around. (Other cells discovered by John O'Keefe, who shared the Nobel Prize with the Moser couple, are responsible for the specific filling of the landscape.) Speed neurons are located in the same place as grid neurons - in the entorhinal cortex, and, most likely, both groups of cells actively communicate with a friend. The research results are published in Nature.

However, it is not certain that the new cells will be the only ones that have the function of a speedometer. According to Michael Hasselmo of Boston University, he and his collaborators will soon have a paper describing several types of velocity-measuring neurons, including those found in the entorhinal cortex.

On the other hand, we can recall a very recent work in Neuron - in which neuroscientists from the University of Bonn and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases describe a neural circuit that links spatial memory and movement speed. By changing the frequency of impulses in this circuit, it was possible to influence the behavior of the mouse, how it moved. The high-speed chain of cells was connected with the hippocampus, the main center of memory; on the other hand, the entorhinal cortex is also included in the "zone of influence" of the hippocampus.

Although all the described experiments were performed on animals, in humans, most likely, things are exactly the same - after all, it is important for us to know the speed of our own movement. Perhaps there are several neural speedometers that together track the movements of the body and report them to the GPS system, which, in turn, together with maps stored in memory, forms a picture of where we are.

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