Going to the Ends of the Earth to Better Understand the Brain

“We are interested in learning how the brain generates behavior and cognition in the real world, but typical studies of the brain are done in the lab,” explained Prof. Ulanovsky. “It was a dream for many years to study how animals can navigate outdoors while we record their brain activity.  We study bats, flying mammals, since their brain is very similar to ours.”

Using Google Earth, Prof. Ulanovsky discovered a tiny, uninhabited “bat island” near Zanzibar off the Tanzanian coast. Together with his team, they travelled to the remote Latham Island to record the neural activity of fruit bats as they flew freely in their natural habitat.  The team had to transport and create an entire lab on the desert island and coordinated satellite communications to capture unprecedented insights into how mammalian brains navigate in the real world.  All of this as the team camped out in nature and weathered a cyclone.

Using miniature recording devices – the smallest of their kind in the world – the team discovered that bats possess an internal “global compass” in their brains. Specialized neurons, called head-direction cells, consistently point in the same direction across the entire island, regardless of the bat’s location or what it sees. This internal compass relies primarily on learning visual landmarks rather than celestial bodies or magnetic fields.

“This finding may help us understand how human navigation works, and how it can be disrupted by diseases like Alzheimer’s.  The broader implication is that you can and should study the brain in the real world,” Prof. Ulanivsky said.