The Israel Blind Mole Rat (a.k.a. Middle East Blind Mole Rat or Palestine Mole Rat) (Spalax ehrenbergi) has its own built-in GPS by using the earth’s magnetic field to monitor its course.

Jan 30, 2020 · In a study of rats navigating a simple maze, neuroscientists at UCSF have discovered how the brain may generate such imagined future scenarios. The work provides a new grounding for understanding not only how the brain makes decisions but also how imagination works more broadly, the researchers say.

Jan 1, 2016 · Recent work has shown that the mammalian brain uses an incredibly sophisticated GPS-like tracking system of its own to guide us from one location to the next. Like the GPS in our phones and...

Oct 6, 2014 · Three researchers who found brain cells that allow rats to orient themselves in space have won the 2014 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

May 27, 2023 · In a new study, scientists discovered that the common marmoset, a primate known for its unique diurnal vision, navigates its world in a way starkly different from the previously studied rats. The research sheds light on the role of the hippocampus – often likened to a Global Positioning System (GPS) of the brain – in spatial navigation.

Jan 11, 2018 · To be successful as a social animal, you need to know where you stand relative to others. Brain cells that perform precisely this function -- locating the 'self' and others in space -- have now...

Jan 24, 2017 · In 1971, John O’Keefe, then at McGill University and now at University College London, discovered the first component of the brain’s GPS in the rat hippocampus — an area of the brain critical for memory. O’Keefe recorded the activity of single neurons as the animals roamed freely in their enclosure.

Apr 17, 2013 · Studying rats' ability to navigate familiar territory, scientists found that the hippocampus uses remembered spatial information to imagine routes the rats then follow.

Dec 5, 2014 · Researchers recorded rats' brain activity while the rodents ran on tiny treadmills in a virtual reality setup. In the virtual world, the animals' brains did not form a mental map of their...

Jan 15, 2018 · In addition to encoding self location, brain cells in the rat hippocampus act like a GPS that encodes the location of other rats.