Found: Neurons that orient bats toward destination
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 2014 for the discovery of place cells and grid cells -- neurons in a part of the brain called the hippocampal formation that tell us where we are in relation to our surroundings. When we are on the move, these cells chart our starting point. But the way in which our brains direct us to a specific destination has remained an open question. Prof. Nachum Ulanovsky and research student Ayelet Sarel of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Neurobiology, together with their colleagues Drs. Arseny Finkelstein and Liora Las, devised a simple experiment with bats to answer this question. The findings of their research appear in Science . The experiment took place in a special room in which the Egyptian fruit bats that Prof. Ulanovsky works with can fly around. Tiny tracking devices attached to the bats enabled the researchers to track their flight paths, on the one hand, and record the activities of the neurons in the area...