You may need to channel you inner Dan Dennett for this one:
Navigating space: Dual maps discovered in the brain
Sep 2024, phys.org
Multidimensional navigation - basically you have two navigation centers, one of them in an area called the secondary motor cortex.
"Imagine being asked where the nearest coffee shop is. You could say 'walk forward and turn left' (self-centered directions) or 'walk north, then east' (world-centered directions). We want to understand how the brain transitions between these reference frames and transforms them into action."
via Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University of College London: Liujunli Li et al, Encoding of 2D Self-Centered Plans and World-Centered Positions in the Rat Frontal Orienting Field, The Journal of Neuroscience (2024). DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0018-24.2024
Image credit: AI Art - Holding Hands 3 - 2023
Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study finds
Nov 2024, phys.org
Isn't this embodied cognition?
"In the future, we will need to treat our body more like the brain - for example, consider what our pancreas remembers about the pattern of our past meals to maintain healthy levels of blood glucose or consider what a cancer cell remembers about the pattern of chemotherapy."In the research, the scientists replicated learning over time by studying two types of non-brain human cells in a laboratory (one from nerve tissue and one from kidney tissue) and exposing them to different patterns of chemical signals - just like brain cells are exposed to patterns of neurotransmitters when we learn new information.In response, the non-brain cells turned on a "memory gene" - the same gene that brain cells turn on when they detect a pattern in the information and restructure their connections in order to form memories.
via New York University Center for Neural Science: N. V. Kukushkin et al, The massed-spaced learning effect in non-neural human cells, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53922-x
No comments:
Post a Comment