The "body cells" in the brain encode three-dimensional positions

new study found that newly discovered neurons in the top cortical layer of mice encode their body posture and spatial awareness. These findings suggest that these "posture cells" or the brain will understand the root causes of the various sensory information needed to understand the body's position in three-dimensional space. For an animal that needs to navigate and survive in any environment, its brain must accept and process information from many different sensory inputs, combine it with what is already known about the world, and then output instructions to the muscles to constantly re-position the body to respond accordingly.
most of this information has high spatial properties, there is no single spatial reference framework or coordination system in the brain. Instead, the brain must transform this information between the coordination systems. However, little is known about the neural signals that make this transformation possible. Previous studies, based mainly on single restricted body movement or operation, have shown that the function of the post-top cortical cortical layer (PPC) is related to the preletete motor cortical layer (i.e. M2, a brain region involving autonomous movement) and plays an important role in understanding the spatial configuration of the body. In rodents, PPC cells have been shown to encode simple motor behavior in two-dimensional, and the authors say little is known about how these parts of the brain behave freely in the nerves.
Bartul Mimica and colleagues tracked rat postures that were free to move in a three-dimensional environment, and they also recorded how these postures were reflected in a single neuron of PPC and M2. Mimica et al. found that more than half of the neurons in PPC and M2 were associated with specific postures in the head, neck and back. In addition, the authors demonstrate that body posture can be reliably predicted by decoding neuron activity in these two brain regions.
article, Guifen Chen presents new questions inspired by these findings, which contradict previous results from exercise studies in mice. "Future experiments will need to be conducted to harmony the newly discovered post cells in the PPC-M2 network with previous studies in rodent and primate PPC to determine how these cells support PPC's complex cognitive function," Chen wrote. (Source: China Science Daily)