Price/pris: Festival pass required
Time/tid: 13:30
The ability to map space is critical to survival. Without it, animals would not find food or partners and they would be eaten by predators.
Neural circuits for finding one´s way thus exist in all animals. In mammals, space is mapped by complex neural networks in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex of the brain. These networks contain a variety of specialized cell types, including grid cells, which were discovered a decade ago. These cells operate as a GPS-like tracking system, updating the brain´s position calculation as we move around in space.
I will show and discuss how space is mapped by grid cells, and how grid cells work together to enable fast dynamic mapping of self-position.
