Navigation cells spotted in the human brain

摘要

We all get lost sometimes. Luckily, specialised cells in the brain can help us find the way home. We know that animals use three cell types to navigate. Direction cells fire when an animal is facing a particular direction, place cells fire only in a specific location, and grid cells fire at regular intervals as an animal moves around. Direction and place cells have been identified in people but the existence of grid cells had only been hinted at in brain scans. To find out whether they exist in humans, Joshua Jacobs at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recruited 14 people who already had electrodes in their brains for epilepsy therapy.