A breakthrough discovery at the Kavli Institute in Norway has uncovered a previously unknown function of grid cells, the specialized neurons that help the brain map space.

Discovered in 2005 by May-Britt and Edvard Moser, grid cells lay the foundation for building mental maps of your surroundings and for tracking your precise positions within these landscapes. As you move around your environment, your movements are being followed by grid cells on an internal map.

But now it turns out that grid cells also perform rapid, rhythmic sweeps into the space ahead of the animal. These sweeps act almost like an antenna, allowing the animal to probe the environment ahead of it. This revelation reshapes our understanding of spatial navigation in the brain.



Ten times per second, grid cells send sweeping probes into the space in front of the rat, in a very regular pattern. Alternately 30 degrees to the right and 30 degrees to the left. Illustration: Rita Elmkvist Nilsen / Kavli Institute / NTNU


Read the full story here:
Sweeps: For Twenty Years, Grid Cells Kept a Secret