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Bat research finds brain socially maps others' locations

526 views · Published 21 February 2018 · 0:59 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: News Direct · 2018 · News & Politics

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New research on bats published in the journal Science provides insights into how the brain maps the social geography of areas.

Researchers trained pairs of bats, with one alpha male labelled as a teacher and the other a student, to retrieve fruit from a stand inside a room. They noted how student typically tracked the teacher's path toward the fruit.

The bats were fitted with technology to record brain cell activity. Activity was normal in students bats acting on their own, but fired when tracking the position of the teacher. Researchers believe this was social place-cells in the hippocampus.

Students bats also tracked objects like balls and dice but their brain activity responded differently. Researchers suspect this could provide insights into how that the brain cognitively maps out the environment socially, and physically.

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Bat research finds brain socially maps others' locations

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