Microsoft Corporation MSFT co-founder Bill Gates recently took to Twitter to share an article published in the Harvard Medical School journal regarding the mechanism behind the brain’s spatial mapping.
“I love learning about the brain. Here’s cool research on brain’s GPS,” he captioned the quote-tweet.
The article explained how we are able to navigate easily through a location, which we have visited already. Our brain’s inbuilt GPS kicks in and forms a spatial map of our surroundings.
This spatial map is solidified as a memory over days and even weeks, it said. The findings are based on a new study conducted in mice, which showed that a gene named “Fos” is key in this spatial mapping.
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“This research connects across the different levels of understanding to make a pretty direct link between molecules and the function of circuits for behavior and memory,” said Christopher Harvey, associate professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
If the findings can be extrapolated to humans, it would provide crucial new information about how our brains construct spatial maps.
“Eventually, this knowledge could help scientists better understand what happens when this process breaks down, as it often does as a result of brain injury or neurodegeneration,” the HBS article said.
Photo: Courtesy of Red Maxwell on flickr
Image and article originally from www.benzinga.com. Read the original article here.