Is This How The Brain Experiences Being in Outer Space?

It’s far more mathematical than expected.

Transcript

00:00Our brains hold a map of everything we know and experience, right?

00:07So does that mean if we could read that map, we could see everything we know?

00:10Well, that's what neurobiologists say they may be able to achieve, and their discovery

00:14seems to reveal how human beings internalize physical space.

00:18According to the research, when you enter a new space, your brain collects neurons to

00:21create a physical memory of that space.

00:23ScienceAlert reports those neurons are then arranged into networks called place fields,

00:27full of place cells.

00:28So researchers tracked the neural activity of rats as they experienced a new space, then

00:32modeling that activity using geometric mathematics.

00:35They came up with something that looks like this in a 2D space, though if this were 3D,

00:39each triangular subsection would actually be the same size.

00:42As the mice moved through the space, place cells were immediately created, then growing

00:46more detailed and becoming more complex as more information was taken in about the space.

00:50With the researchers writing about it, quote, our study demonstrates that the brain does

00:54not always act in a linear manner.

00:56Instead, neural networks function along an expanding curve, which can be analyzed and

01:00understood using hyperbolic geometry and information theory, meaning we're finally getting an

01:05esoteric understanding of just how our brains understand space, bringing us one step closer

01:09to unraveling a map of our memories.