United Kingdom.- Mice, when threatened, can quickly and instinctively escape to a shelter and researchers have discovered the brain mechanism that guides them, thus finding a clear link between spatial goals and actions.
A study by British scientists published in “Nature” explains how mice incorporate knowledge of safe places to run the most efficient route to a refuge.
Neuroscientists discovered that two areas of the mouse brain, the retrosplenial cortex (RSP) and the superior colliculus (SC), form a circuit that encodes the direction to a shelter, allowing them to orient themselves precisely and escape to safety. .
When a fire alarm sounds, we instinctively know how to get out of the room to safety, which is because the brain continually keeps track of where the exit is, and does so unconsciously.
The team wanted to understand how the brain uses such important spatial information to get to a place as soon as possible, explained Tiago Branco, from the Sainsbury Wellcome Center (United Kingdom) and one of the authors of the article.
From previous studies, it was known that this process is based on memory. Some people with RSP lesions can remember familiar places, but are disoriented in space and lose the ability to connect an action with a spatial goal. For example, they may know where the door is, but not what actions to take to get to it.
The team worked with mice to which they attached miniature electrodes to simultaneously record two brain regions – RSP and SC – while being presented with a threatening sound.
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The RSP calculates the haven address and then sends this information to the SC, which uses this address to turn the mouse’s head.
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