Oct 10 2024
Published by
NYU Shanghai
A team of researchers led by Professor Jeffrey Erlich has identified two maps in the brain’s secondary motor cortex, which play a key role in spatial planning and navigation. By recording neural activity in rats in the frontal orienting field (FOF) in the secondary motor cortex, the team discovered that self-centered and world-centered information is combined in this region in individual neurons in a multiplicative way. Published in The Journal of Neuroscience, this work offers a new framework for examining complex coordination systems for spatial planning in rodents, with far reaching implications for understanding orientation and spatial navigation.
For most of us, navigating our world is a relatively seamless process. We perform simple tasks with ease and smoothly orient ourselves as we move throughout our environment. However, behind the scenes, our brains use multiple frames of reference from different regions to navigate the world and plan our next actions. These frames of reference can be thought of as being divided into two groups: a self-centered perspective that is embodied and based on the viewer’s position and point of view, and a world-centered frame that depends on the environment itself. The difference between the two can be imagined from the perspective of one being given directions to turn left or right, versus being given directions to head North or South.
But how can scientists determine the way each frame of reference is being used and identify where these reference transformations take place?
To approach the complex coordinate transformations involved in navigation, the team designed an experiment that could account for and differentiate between these frames of reference in a new but simplified way. By designing a multi-stage task involving visual and audio cues, and examining preparatory activity in the frontal cortex – the area that predicts upcoming choice – the team yielded novel results. The team found that the premotor cortex uses both a self-centered coordinate system for spatial planning, while simultaneously encoding a world-centered map used for determining the body’s current position in the world.
Finding a world-centered map in the FOF was a surprising discovery, and the team is eager to continue their work to determine the functional relevance of the world-centered map. Their work helps to advance our understanding of the fundamental processes of spatial attention and its link to the planning and execution of orienting movements in navigation, which has major implications, in areas like healthcare for those who have suffered stroke or trauma that affects coordination.
Professor Erlich initiated this project when he was a faculty member at NYU Shanghai, collaborating with a team of researchers at the NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai. He and the team continued on this project after Professor Erlich joined UCL as a Group Leader at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in 2022.