Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition

大脑导航：空间认知的神经生物学

• 批准号: DP150101172
• 负责人: Prof Ken Cheng
• 金额: $ 63.4万
• 依托单位: Macquarie University
• 依托单位国家: 澳大利亚
• 项目类别: Discovery Projects
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 澳大利亚
• 起止时间: 2015-06-30 至 2019-06-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/Web/Grants/DP150101172
• 关键词: Navigating; brains; neurobiology; spatial; cognition

Navigation is one of the most crucial and most challenging problems animals face. Behavioural analyses have shown that animals make use of a number of different mechanisms to navigate, but very little is known of how different forms of spatial information are processed and integrated by the brain. The project aims to tackle this by placing tethered ants in a virtual-reality simulation of their real environment allowing precise control of visual navigational cues, as well as the opportunity to study the brains of the tethered ants as they solve the real-world challenge of finding home. This may reveal how simple brains efficiently solve navigational tasks, which may inform both cognitive biology and bio-inspired computation.

导航是动物面临的最关键、最具挑战性的问题之一。行为分析表明，动物利用许多不同的机制来导航，但对大脑如何处理和整合不同形式的空间信息知之甚少。为了解决这个问题，该项目将被拴住的蚂蚁置于对其真实环境的虚拟现实模拟中，从而精确控制视觉导航线索，并有机会研究被拴住的蚂蚁在解决寻找家园的现实挑战时的大脑。这可能会揭示简单的大脑如何有效地解决导航任务，这可能会为认知生物学和生物启发计算提供信息。