Researchers show that mental ‘map’ and ‘compass’ are two separate systems

In a new study in mice, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that mental 'map' and 'compass' systems work independently. A cue that unambiguously provided both types of information allowed the mice to determine their location but not the direction they were facing. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

by Medical Xpress

If you have a map, you can know where you are without knowing which way you are facing. If you have a compass, you can know which way you’re facing without knowing where you are. Animals from ants to mice to humans use both kinds of information to reorient themselves in familiar places, but how they determine this information from environmental cues is not well understood.

In a new study in mice, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that these systems work independently. A cue that unambiguously provided both types of information allowed the mice to determine their location but not the direction they were facing.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by graduate students Joshua Julian and Alexander Keinath, assistant professor Isabel Muzzio and professor Russell Epstein, all of the Department of Psychology in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences.

“When you’re lost,” Epstein said, “how do you reestablish your bearings? People have been studying this for more than 25 years, but they have not focused on the fact that place recognition, figuring out where you are, and heading retrieval, figuring out which way you’re facing, could be two separate systems.”

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