Right Time
and Place: May Britt and Edvard Moser Explore the Brain’s GPS
Gorman,
James. "Right Time and Place." The New York Times. The
New York Times, 29 Apr. 2013. Web. 29 Apr. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/science/
may-britt-and-edvard-moser-explore-the-brains-gps.html>.
This article describes the discovery
of grid cells in rat brains. These cells are a kind of built-in navigation
system that is at the very heart of how animals know where they are, where they
are going and where they have been. May Britt and Edvard Moser, spearheading
this research, have shown that this special function occurs in the entorhinal
cortex, which is at the back base of the brain. They noticed cells that would
emit a signal every time a rat went to a particular spot, and they soon learned
that the cells tracked the rat’s movement in the same way, no matter where the
rat was. The cell was not responding to some external mark, but keeping track
of how the rat moved. These cells would then inform place cells in the
hippocampus (through an unknown mechanism), which sends the signal back with
precise location information. Britt and Moser found that a very regular pattern
emerged- the grid cells fired in a hexagonal formation in specific areas,
creating a “grid” like a checkerboard (see picture below).
This research can be the basis of
several scientific developments to come. It has been hypothesized that the way
the grid cells record and remember movement in space may be the basis of all
memory. This can have huge implications for the way we learn and study in
school. It is also known that the area in the brain that contains the grid cell
navigation system is often damaged early in Alzheimer’s disease, and one
of the frequent early symptoms of Alzheimer’s patients is that they get lost.
These findings perhaps can help develop new treatments for Alzheimer’s in the
future.
I believe that the author did a mediocre good job
explaining the treatment and its implications.
He went a lot into the personal
life of the researchers and how they came about the research project,
and a lot
more unimportant information. At times, his progression of ideas was confusing
as well. He
didn’t do a good job explaining what the research found either. It wasn’t
very well organized, well
written, or informative. The picture contains more
information in a few sentences than the entire article
encompasses.
