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Jun 29, 2024

Researchers find brains can tune their navigation system without landmarks

Posted by in categories: biological, engineering, neuroscience

Johns Hopkins research sheds new light on how mammals track their position and orientation while moving, revealing that visual motion cues alone allow the brain to adjust and recalibrate its internal map even in the absence of stable visual landmarks.

Their results are published in Nature Neuroscience.

“When you move through space, you have a lot of competing telling you where you are and how fast you are going, and your brain has to make sense of that,” said study co-leader Noah Cowan, professor of mechanical engineering at the Whiting School of Engineering and director of the Locomotion in Mechanical and Biological Systems (LIMBS) Laboratory.

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