Hidden order in the brain’s GPS

March 12, 2025

Rava Azeredo da Silveira and collaborators have revealed a surprisingly simple mathematical principle that explains how brain cells create mental maps across different species and environments.

For decades, neuroscientists believed that hippocampal place cells – neurons that help create mental maps of our environment – functioned in a simple, uniform way. Recent experiments, however, revealed these cells exhibit far more complex and irregular patterns than previously thought, particularly in large environments.

This study, just published in Neuron, shows that the apparent irregularity follows a precise mathematical principle based on random Gaussian processes. The team demonstrated that these fundamental mathematical rules govern spatial navigation across different species and environments, whether in rodents running through tunnels or bats flying in three-dimensional space.

This mathematical framework unifies our understanding of the representation of space in the brain, in different environments and animal species. What appears as irregular patterns in place cell activity actually emerges from a simple and elegant underlying principle. It suggests that the brain capitalizes on randomness in a clever way.
RAVA AZEREDO DA SILVEIRA

The study provides a quantitative explanation for the diversity of place-cell patterns observed in different animal species and spatial dimensions. The results suggest that the apparent complexity of the brain’s navigation system may arise from predominantly random synaptic connections, challenging previous assumptions about highly organized neural circuits.