Brain Waves That Govern Our Navigation Discovered

Brain’s navigation via physical space and how it keeps track of others' location has been mapped out by scientists, in a study – part of the NIH's Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative, published in the journalNature. The team enrolled a group of participants with drug-resistant epilepsy, 31-52 years old and utilised a special backpack connected wirelessly to surgically implanted electrodes in the patient’s head for controlling their seizures.This technology was employed to monitor the brain waves of those patients.

The patients were allowed to walk around an empty 330-square-foot room hunting for a hidden, two-foot spot.

Each wall of the room was lined with a row of five coloured signs numbered 1 through 5, one color per wall. Through a ceiling-mounted speaker, a computerized voice asked the patient to walk to one of the signs. Once they arrived at the sign the voice then asked them to search for a two-foot in diameter spot hidden somewhere in the room. Meanwhile, the backpack recorded the patient's brain waves, paths through the room, and eye movements.

Unlike traditional brain monitoring systems where patients are restricted to a fixed position, this new technology has gained a breakthrough in studying brain activities as the patient moves freely.

It was interesting to note that the brain waves flowed in a distinct pattern suggesting that each individual's brain had mapped out the walls and other boundaries. Synchrony was noted among the waves of different individuals when they sat in the corner of the room and watched someone else walk around. This suggests that the waves were also used to track other people's movements.

"We were able to directly study for the first time how a person's brain navigates an actual physical space that is shared with others. Our results suggest that our brains may use a common code for knowing where we and others are in social settings", says Nanthia Suthana, PhD, an assistant professor of neurosurgery and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and senior author.

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Several observations have supported the role of the medial temporal lobe to control navigation in rodents. This is done through the neurons in this lobe, known as grid cells and place cells, that act like a global positioning system (GPS) by low frequency neural activity of these cells, called theta rhythms.In this way, the rodents know where they and others are while running through a maze or swimming aroundallow a pool of water.

Other factors that could aid in the navigation such as activity associated with a different eye, body, or head movements, were possibly ruled out.

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“Our results support the idea that our brains may use these wave patterns to put ourselves in another person's shoes. The results open the door to helping us understand how our brains control navigation and, possibly, other social interactions, ” says Dr. Suthana.

The team has made this technology available fora wide varietyof projects ranging from mapping the neural circuits that controlwhat an octopus sees to helping people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries regain movements by upgrading computer programs that drive neural stimulation devices, thereby allowing to study more about the brain and their disorders.

Source-Medindia