Grid Cells and The Brains Map of Space

2017.02.07

The entorhinal cortex and the hippocampus are elements of the brain’s circuit for spatial navigation and memory. This talk demonstrates that the entorhinal cortex contains grid cells – cells with firing fields that tile environments in a periodic hexagonal pattern, like an internal coordinate system – as well as cells that monitor direction, speed, and local borders. Collectively, these cells form the elements of a positioning system that dynamically monitors our changing location in the environment. Deficiencies in the function of this map may be at the core of neurological diseases where spatial orientation is affected, such as Alzheimer´s disease.

Speaker
Edvard Moser Nobel Laureate; Founding Director, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience; Professor of Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)