Image credit: Public domain
When we step out of our homes in the morning, we scan our surroundings to decide which path we should take. It is still unclear whether we use different brain areas to examine the environment, decide on a route, and then set our trajectory, or if a single region can play a role in all three processes. An area in the top of our brain, named the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), may be an intriguing candidate: some studies find that this region is involved in vision, others highlight that it takes part in decision-making, and a third group of experiments shows that it is important for setting paths. Could the PPC be integrating all three types of information, or might the activity of the neurons in this area be better explained by just one of these processes?
Here, Krumin et al. trained mice to use visual clues to navigate a virtual reality maze, where they have to ‘walk’ down a corridor and then choose to ‘go down’ the right or the left arm. The rodents move on a ball suspended in mid-air, which acts as a treadmill. Meanwhile, the head of the animal is kept still, making it easier to image the activity of hundreds of neurons in the PPC.
The experiments show that when the mouse uses its vision to choose its trajectory, the PPC does not encode visual signals or abstract decisions. Instead, two navigational attributes – the position of the animal along the corridor and its heading angle – activate neurons in this area. Knowing these two features was enough for Krumin et al. to accurately predict the activity of the neurons in the PPC.
This means that we can forecast the activity of neurons deep in the brain by recording simple behavioral features. The results also suggest that the PPC may be more important for setting trajectories than for processing visual images or making abstract decisions. If these findings were to be confirmed in humans, where the parietal cortex is much more complex, they might help understand better the problems that arise when this area is damaged, for example after a stroke.
