“The Neural Basis of Mental Navigation in Rats: A Brain–machine Interface Demonstrates Volitional Control of Hippocampal Activity”, 2023-11-02 (; backlinks):
Complex behaviors such as navigation often require chains of decisions that can be mentally simulated ahead of carrying out the behavior. The activity of spatially coding neurons (place cells) in the hippocampus and associated cortical regions has been posited as the expression of a “cognitive map”, which could serve as a substrate for generating these complex behaviors1.
On page 566 of this issue, et al 2023 report that rats can navigate through a virtual reality (VR) environment using a brain-machine interface (BMI) that estimates the rat’s mental location from the ongoing activity of neurons in its hippocampus.
This finding is an exciting expansion of BMI implementation from sensorimotor functions to a more cognitive domain and suggests that hippocampal activity is under volitional control. In addition, the BMI approach provides a new tool for probing the circuit-level mechanisms of mental navigation and spatial imagination.