Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Neurobiological work on mammalian navigation has been greatly informed by studies of single neurons (individually or in ensembles) in freely exploring/navigating rodents. In seeking to understand the fundamental mechanisms underlying navigation, these studies have uncovered a panoply of “canonical neurons” (e.g., place, head-direction, and grid cells) that exhibit activity patterns that are recognizable as components of a spatial code. However, it is increasingly clear that much or even most of the brain is involved in navigation, and that many navigationally involved neurons do not have canonical space-coding properties. Understanding these other areas, their functions, and the nature of the less-obvious coding schemes is challenging but important, and so this chapter asks: How do we get traction on these more complex, integrated and distributed signals? What new technology or experimental paradigms could help? What are the next steps for neurobiological navigation research? Discussion concludes with an examination of whether the mammalian navigation network has developed, over evolutionary time, to support other types of cognition.
Source: Springer eBooks
Institutions: Ruhr University Bochum, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Bern, University of California, Santa Barbara, Brandeis University, University of Cambridge, University College London, Max Planck Society, Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience, University of Oslo, University of Glasgow
Language: English
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7147293379