place cells tagged posts

Snapshot of neuronal activity in a normal, healthy mouse (left) compared to a mouse genetically modified to mimic schizophrenia (right). Credit: Attila Losonczy/Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute

A team of Columbia scientists has found that disruptions to the brain’s center for spatial navigation—its internal GPS—result in some of the severe memory deficits seen in schizophrenia. The new study in mouse models of the disorder marks the first time that schizophrenia’s effects have been observed in the behavior of living animals—and at the level of individual brain cells—with such high-resolution, precision and clarity...

A rat enjoys some chocolatey liquid. Ellen Ambrose, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Johns Hopkins neuroscientists believe they have figured out how some mammals’ brains—in this case, rats—solve navigational problems. If there’s a “reward” at the end of the trip, like the chocolatey drink used in their study, specialized neurons in the hippocampus of the brain “replay” the route taken to get it, but backward. And the greater the reward, the more often the rats’ brains replay it. The finding suggests both the presence and magnitude of rewards influence how and how well the hippocampus forms memories.

“We’ve long known that the brains of awake animals have these replay events when they pause in their travels...