Research reveals how our brain tracks where we and others go

ANI |
Has been updated: December 25, 2020 15:52 IS

Washington [US], December 25 (ANI): As the number of cases of COVID increases, it is more important than ever to physically keep yourself away from others. A new study at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) now reveals how the brain navigates locations and monitors others in the same location. Location..
Findings published on December 23 in Nature suggest that our brains generate common code that shows where other people are in their relationship with us.
“We studied how the brain reacts when navigating through physical space, first alone and then with others,” said Ruth and Raymond Stocker of Neurosurgery. According to senior author Nanthia Suthana, chair and assistant professor of neurosurgery and psychiatry at David Geffen School. University of California, Los Angeles and Jane and Terry Semel School of Medicine, Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
“Our results mean that our brain creates a universal signature that puts us in the position of others,” he says, studying how the brain is formed and remembers memory. Sazana is added.
Suthana and her colleagues have observed patients with epilepsy who had previously surgically implanted electrodes in their brains to control seizures. The electrodes are located in the medial temporal lobe, and the center of the brain is connected to memory and is thought to regulate navigation like a GPS device.
“Early studies have shown that low-frequency brain waves from neurons in the medial temporal lobe help rodents track where they are when navigating to new locations,” he said. The author states. Matthias Stangle, Postdoctoral fellow in Sazana’s lab. “We wanted to investigate this idea among people and test whether they could monitor others nearby, but it was hampered by existing technology.”
Using the $ 3.3 million award from the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative, Suthana’s lab has invented a special backpack that includes a computer that connects wirelessly to brain electrodes. This allowed her to move freely and study what she was studying, instead of lying down on a brain scanner or connecting to a recording device.
In this experiment, each patient was instructed to wear a backpack, explore an empty room, find a hidden location, and remember it for future searches. While they were walking, the backpack recorded their brain waves, eye movements, and the path through the room in real time.

As participants searched for a room, their brain waves flowed in a unique pattern, suggesting that each person’s brain mapped walls and other boundaries. Interestingly, when the patient sat in the corner of the room and saw someone else approaching, the patient’s brain waves flowed in the same way. Location Of a hidden place.
This finding means that our brain produces the same pattern to track where we and others are in a shared environment.
Why is this important?
“In our daily activities, we need to constantly navigate other people in the same place,” said Sazana, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Faculty of Literature and biotechnology at Henry Sameri Institute of Technology. I am. “Consider choosing the shortest airport security line, looking for space in a crowded parking lot, or avoiding hitting someone on the dance floor.”
In a secondary finding, the UCLA team discovered that our attention could affect how our brains plan. Location.. For example, when a patient searched for a hiding place or witnessed another person approaching, the patient’s brain waves flowed more strongly. Location -More than when they just explored the room.
“Our results support the idea that under certain mental states, this pattern of brain waves may help recognize boundaries,” Stangl said. “In this case, it was when people were focused on their goals and looking for something.”
Future research will explore how people’s brain patterns react in more complex social situations, including outside the lab. The UCLA team has made backpacks available to other researchers to accelerate their discovery of brain and brain damage.
Co-authors include Uros Topalovic, Corey Inman, Sonya Hiller, Diane Villa Roman, Zahra Aghajan, Dawn area shift And Isaac Fried, All from UCLA. Leonardo Christoph Moore of USC; Nicholas Hasulak of NeuroPace Inc; Vikram Rao of UCSF and Casey Halpern of Stanford University School of Medicine.
This study was supported by funding from the NIH Brain Initiative, the McKnight Foundation, and the Keck Foundation. (ANI)