Mimi in the land of place cells

Discovering the tale

Mimi in the land of place cells

 

 

Mimi explore the function of spatial localisation by visiting neurons that have a very specific work: in the brain, every one have his specialty.

 

 

The team of CogniJunior

/ CogniJunior

Our next tale is under construction and will be called Mimi in the land of place cells.

Mimi, out little microglia, immune cell of the brain, will have new adventures. She is surprised that detailed information come from neurons of a brain region, the hippocampus, when we are searching for something. Neurons are always happy to call them for help, they never failed when it’s about situating thing in the environment. Mimi is really curious to know how they are organized to work so efficiently. In comparison, where Mimi is working at the moment, the parietal cortex, where we manage attention to a direction or another, neurons receive information from everywhere and are obliged to eliminate some of them, choosing most important ones but sometime not choosing very wisely.

It’s time to take some holidays and Mimi know exactly where to go: the hippocampus and theses special cells that are called place cells. It’s them that enable us to oriented in space. Mimi arrived at the moment of a “research time”: apparently, we lose something and we have to find it back. The idea is to look everywhere, where we come from. Mimi helps the microglia there in the mean time discovering the functioning very specific and hierarchic of theses neurons : place cells.

There, she met a neuron that don’t see himself as very useful next to his colleagues, but is he right ? As for mimi, she is going to review her knowledge about the brain, did the brain do mistake everywhere sometimes?

Scientific knowledge:

• inattentional blindness, when we don’t see something because we are not focusing on it
• the functioning of spatial localisation and cell population involved and well known: place cells and grid cells
• the hippocampus
• the discovery of another reality of the brain: do mistakes are necessary?
• nocturnes activity evocation