Navigating brains: the neurobiology of spatial cognition

导航是动物面临的最关键和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。该项目旨在解决这一问题，方法是将被拴住的蚂蚁放在它们真实环境的虚拟现实模拟中，允许精确控制视觉导航提示，并在它们解决寻找家园的现实挑战时，有机会研究被拴住的蚂蚁的大脑。这可能会揭示简单的大脑是如何高效地解决导航任务的，这可能会为认知生物学和生物启发计算提供信息。

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.