Scientists have discovered what allows a person to navigate in space
A special mechanism of brain activity helps people orient themselves in space, the exact localization of which was determined by experts from Germany and Great Britain. A similar "internal compass" has previously been identified in rodents.
Nerve cells of the brain are responsible for navigation, i.e. understanding how to move from one point to another. However, it is not easy to measure neural activity in humans during movement, because existing methods mainly require that a person remains as immobile as possible.
Researchers from the University of Birmingham in the UK and the Ludwig and Maximilian University of Munich in Germany have overcome this problem by using mobile electroencephalography devices and motion capture technology (motion capture) - a method that allows digitizing the movement of an object and creating animated three-dimensional models. Specialists have studied what and in what part of the brain occurs at times when a person needs to perform an action related to orientation in space. The results of their work published the journal Nature Human Behavior.
Scientists have identified a neural signal that precedes the turning of the head or moving the gaze in the desired direction. According to the scientific paper, its source is the temporal lobe of the brain. At the same time, the strongest signal was in the middle temporal lobe. A similar mechanism was previously identified in birds, rats and bats.
To determine where exactly is the "internal neural compass", allowed a series of experiments involving 62 adults, among whom there were 52 healthy and 10 epileptic patients. They were asked to perform tasks requiring them to turn their heads or direct their gaze in the right direction. Brain activity was recorded using caps with EEG sensors that measure signals from the scalp, as well as intracranial electroencephalography.
"Highlighting these signals allows us to really focus on how the brain processes navigational information and how these signals interact with other signals, such as visual landmarks. Our approach has opened up new avenues for studying these features, which may have implications for research on neurodegenerative diseases and even for improving navigation technologies in robotics and artificial intelligence," the study authors said.
Among the neurodegenerative diseases for the study of which the results may be useful are Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. They often violate navigation and orientation in space.
In the future, the researchers plan to focus on how the human brain navigates through time. They hope that the results related to the "internal compass" will help to understand whether such neural activity is responsible for memory.