Brain maps help guide you through large-scale space, researchers find

Description

Lost? Not sure how to get home? Trying to find your way through the mall or an airport? Help is on the way, thanks to a stack of cells, or neurons, in your head. They're mostly on the left side of the brain in males, on the right in females.

Scientists have long known that a small, seahorse-shaped region in the brain, the hippocampus, contains neurons called "place cells" that specialize in geography.

In recent years, working mostly with laboratory rats, they have discovered additional types of neurons in or near the hippocampus known as "grid cells," "head-direction cells" and "border cells."

Taken together, "these cells form a map of the environment," said Edvard Moser, a leading expert on brain mapping at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.

The brain maps tell animals, including humans, where they are, how they got there and how to navigate to their next destinations, neuroscientists say.

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