How Animals Build a Sense of Direction

Researchers brought Egyptian fruit bats to a remote island to study how a network of cells in the mammalian brain constructs a directional sense in the wild.

研究人员将埃及果蝠带到一个偏远的岛屿，研究哺乳动物大脑中的细胞网络如何在野外构建方向感。

On a remote island in the Indian Ocean, six closely watched bats took to the star-draped skies.

在印度洋的一个偏远岛屿上，六只受到密切关注的蝙蝠飞上了布满星星的天空。

As they flew across the seven-acre speck of land, devices implanted in their brains pinged data back to a group of sleepy-eyed neuroscientists monitoring them from below.

当他们飞过这片七英亩的土地时，植入他们大脑的设备将数据传回给一群睡眼惺忪的神经科学家，他们从下面监视着他们。

The researchers were working to understand how these flying mammals, who have brains not unlike our own, develop a sense of direction while navigating a new environment.

研究人员正在努力了解这些飞行哺乳动物的大脑与我们的大脑没有什么不同，它们是如何在新环境中形成方向感的。

The research, published in Science , reported that the bats used a network of brain cells that informed their sense of direction around the island.

这项发表在《科学》杂志上的研究报告称，蝙蝠利用脑细胞网络来感知岛屿周围的方向。

Their “internal compass” was tuned by neither the Earth’s magnetic field nor the stars in the sky, but rather by landmarks that informed a mental map of the animal’s environment.

它们的“内部指南针”既不是由地球磁场也不是天空中的星星来调整，而是由地标来调整，这些地标告诉了动物环境的心理地图。

These first-ever wild experiments in mammalian mapmaking confirm decades of lab results and support one of two competing theories about how an internal neural compass anchors itself to the environment.

这些哺乳动物制图史上的首次野生实验证实了数十年的实验室结果，并支持了关于内部神经罗盘如何将自身锚定到环境的两种相互竞争的理论之一。

When you navigate busy streets, a set of neurons is helping to guide you.

当您在繁忙的街道上行驶时，一组神经元正在帮助引导您。

But it’s not easy to simulate mental map-building in a lab.

但在实验室中模拟思维导图的构建并不容易。

“Now we’re understanding a basic principle about how the mammalian brain works” under natural, real-world conditions, said the behavioral neuroscientist Paul Dudchenko , who studies spatial navigation at the University of Stirling in the United Kingdom and was not involved in the study.

英国斯特灵大学研究空间导航的行为神经科学家保罗·杜琴科（Paul Dudchenko）表示，“现在我们正在了解哺乳动物大脑在自然、现实条件下如何工作的基本原理”，他没有参与这项研究。

“It will be a paper people will be talking about for 50 years.”

“这将是一篇人们将谈论 50 年的论文。”

Follow-up experiments that haven’t yet been published show that other cells critical to navigation encode much more information in the wild than they do in the lab, emphasizing the need to test neurobiological theories in the real world.

尚未发表的后续实验表明，对导航至关重要的其他细胞在野外编码的信息比在实验室中编码的信息多得多，这强调了在现实世界中测试神经生物学理论的必要性。

Neuroscientists believe that a similar internal compass, composed of neurons known as “head direction cells,” might also exist in the human brain — though they haven’t yet been located.

神经科学家认为，人类大​​脑中也可能存在类似的内部指南针，由被称为“头部方向细胞”的神经元组成，尽管它们尚未被发现。

If they are someday found, the mechanism could shed light on common sensations such as getting “turned around” and quickly reorienting oneself.

如果有一天它们被发现，该机制可以揭示常见的感觉，例如“转身”和快速重新定位自己。

It might even explain why some of us are so bad at finding our way.

它甚至可以解释为什么我们中的一些人如此不善于找到自己的出路。

How the mammalian brain navigates the environment has been a source of fascination for scientists for at least half a century.

至少半个世纪以来，哺乳动物大脑如何驾驭环境一直是科学家们着迷的源泉。

Its study has led to the discovery of “extremely interesting phenomena, several of which have won Nobel Prizes,” said Nanthia Suthana , a neuroscientist at Duke University.

杜克大学神经科学家南蒂亚·苏塔纳 (Nanthia Suthana) 表示，其研究发现了“极其有趣的现象，其中一些现象已获得诺贝尔奖”。

In the early 1970s, John O’Keefe, a neuroscientist at University College London, discovered cells in the rat hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub, that responded to specific locations in the rodents’ enclosures.

20 世纪 70 年代初，伦敦大学学院的神经科学家约翰·奥基夫 (John O’Keefe) 在老鼠海马体（大脑的记忆中心）中发现了一些细胞，这些细胞对啮齿类动物围栏中的特定位置做出反应。

He called them “place cells.” A few decades later, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology discovered, in a nearby brain area, cells that create a coordinate system for the brain, which they called “grid cells.” The three researchers were awarded a Nobel Prize for their discoveries.

他称它们为“位置细胞”。几十年后，挪威科技大学的梅-布里特·莫泽和爱德华·莫泽在附近的大脑区域发现了为大脑创建坐标系的细胞，他们将其称为“网格细胞”。这三位研究人员因其发现而获得了诺贝尔奖。

Neuroscientists camped on a seven-acre island in the Indian Ocean to study how bats orient themselves in a large, wild environment.

神经科学家在印度洋一座占地七英亩的岛屿上扎营，研究蝙蝠如何在广阔的野生环境中定位自己。

Though the island is small, the bats can’t see from one end to the other.

虽然岛很小，但蝙蝠却看不到从一端到另一端的情况。

Together, these two cell types can create a map of an animal’s surroundings.

这两种细胞类型一起可以创建动物周围环境的地图。

But knowing where you are in space isn’t enough to get you somewhere else.

但知道你在太空中的位置并不足以让你到达其他地方。

“You also need to know what direction you’re facing,” said Jeffrey Taube , a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College.

“你还需要知道你面临的方向，”达特茅斯学院的神经科学家杰弗里·陶布说。

“You need those two key pieces of information.

“你需要这两个关键信息。

One without the other doesn’t do you much good.”

两者缺一不可对你有多大好处。”

In 1984, Jim Ranck , a neuroscientist at the State University of New York Downstate in Brooklyn, New York, was investigating what happens when information from place cells leaves the hippocampus when he accidentally discovered what became known as head direction cells.

1984 年，纽约州立大学下州分校的神经科学家吉姆·兰克 (Jim Ranck) 在研究当位置细胞的信息离开海马体时会发生什么情况时，他意外地发现了所谓的头部方向细胞。

These cells didn’t seem to care where the animal was located; instead, they responded to the direction the animal was facing.

这些细胞似乎并不关心动物所在的位置；相反，他们对动物所面对的方向做出反应。

“It was a very serendipitous but obviously wonderful finding,” said Taube, who did his postdoctoral work under Ranck.

“这是一个非常偶然但显然很棒的发现，”在兰克的指导下完成博士后工作的陶布说。

In the years since, neuroscientists have characterized how head direction cells work in rodents.

此后的几年里，神经科学家已经描述了啮齿类动物头部定向细胞的工作原理。

The neurons receive inputs from the external world, through the things we see, hear, and touch, and also from the internal world, especially from the vestibular system, a network in the inner ear that tracks head movements.

神经元通过我们看到、听到和触摸的事物接收来自外部世界的输入，也接收来自内部世界的输入，特别是来自前庭系统的输入，前庭系统是内耳中跟踪头部运动的网络。

It’s thought that as an animal moves around, it keeps track of its movement relative to the landmarks around it, learns to associate certain landmarks with certain directions, and uses this information to constantly update its mental map.

人们认为，当动物四处移动时，它会跟踪自己相对于周围地标的运动，学会将某些地标与某些方向联系起来，并利用这些信息不断更新其心理地图。

Neuroscientists have come to call this system the head direction circuit, or internal compass.

神经科学家将这个系统称为头部方向回路或内部指南针。

“It’s not a compass in a magnetic sense, but it is a compass in an absolute sense,” Dudchenko said.

“它不是磁力意义上的指南针，但它是绝对意义上的指南针，”杜琴科说​​。

“What does a compass do?

“指南针有什么作用？

It keeps orientation relative to where you are, or where you’re standing, or what environment you are in.”

它可以根据您所在的位置、您站立的位置或您所处的环境保持方向。”

These head direction cells are connected in a ringlike system called a ring attractor network.

这些头部方向的细胞连接在一个称为环形吸引子网络的环形系统中。

In mammals, this network is not a physical ring (though it is, strangely, in fruit flies), but it can be schematically represented as such.

在哺乳动物中，这个网络不是一个物理环（尽管奇怪的是，在果蝇中却是），但它可以被示意性地表示为这样。

The ring is always active.

环始终处于活动状态。

When an animal faces a particular direction, certain cells in the ring fire.

当动物面向特定方向时，环中的某些细胞会放电。

When the animal turns, those cells turn off and others activate in a continuous fashion.

当动物转动时，这些细胞会关闭，而其他细胞会持续激活。

“As the animal keeps turning its head 360 degrees, a sequence of different cells will fire, each of them tuned to a specific direction,” said James Knierim , a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the new research.

约翰·霍普金斯大学的神经科学家詹姆斯·克尼尔姆（James Knierim）没有参与这项新研究，他说：“当动物不断将头旋转 360 度时，一系列不同的细胞会放电，每个细胞都会调整到一个特定的方向。”

(He co-authored an accompanying perspective on the paper for Science .)

（他与人合着了《科学》杂志上这篇论文的附带观点。）

The big question, Knierim said, was whether these cells would remain faithful to their assigned directions, as a magnetic compass does, in the real world, where animals live in large territories.

克涅里姆说，最大的问题是这些细胞是否会像磁罗盘一样忠实于它们指定的方向，而在动物生活在大片领土的现实世界中。

Previous work had generated two competing theories.

之前的工作产生了两种相互竞争的理论。

The “global compass” hypothesis claims that each head direction cell commits to a direction during continuous navigation through a large environment: A cell that fires when an animal faces northeast will always fire for northeast.

“全球指南针”假说声称，每个头部方向细胞在大环境中连续导航时都致力于一个方向：当动物面向东北时放电的细胞将始终向东北放电。

The “mosaic” hypothesis suggests that head direction cells reset and change their compass direction as an animal moves through different regions of a large environment, so that north-indicating cells in one region may represent east in another part.

“马赛克”假说表明，当动物穿过大环境的不同区域时，头部方向细胞会重置并改变其指南针方向，因此一个区域中的向北指示细胞可能代表另一部分的东方。

All the research on this question had been done in small, enclosed spaces.

关于这个问题的所有研究都是在狭小的封闭空间中进行的。

To understand how the compass really works, the scientists needed to go outside.

为了了解指南针的真正工作原理，科学家们需要走出去。

Everything we know about what’s going on in the brains of mammals as they navigate their environments comes from lab experiments.

我们所知道的关于哺乳动物在环境中航行时大脑中发生的一切都来自实验室实验。

But they give an incomplete view.

但他们的观点并不完整。

In a small box on a lab bench, an animal sees “immediately everything there is to see,” said Nachum Ulanovsky , a behavioral systems neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

以色列魏茨曼科学研究所的行为系统神经科学家纳楚姆·乌拉诺夫斯基 (Nachum Ulanovsky) 说，在实验室长凳上的一个小盒子里，动物“能立即看到所有能看到的东西”。

“It’s not real navigation in the challenging sense, like you would navigate in a city.”

“从具有挑战性的意义上来说，这不是真正的导航，就像你在城市中导航一样。”

Nachum Ulanovsky calibrates GPS devices (here, mounted to a mop) to specific locations on Latham Island.

Nachum Ulanovsky 将 GPS 设备（此处安装在拖把上）校准到莱瑟姆岛的特定位置。

The system tracks the brain activity of bats in flight as they build a neural map of the novel environment.

该系统跟踪飞行中蝙蝠的大脑活动，因为它们构建了新环境的神经图。

When walking around a city, on the other hand, we constantly integrate information about space and time, and from our own memories.

另一方面，当我们在城市中漫步时，我们会不断整合有关空间和时间的信息以及我们自己的记忆。

We need a mental map, sure, but we also must deal with environmental interference: We need to avoid a cyclist, run across a street before the light turns red, and step over trash without slamming into other people.

当然，我们需要一张心理地图，但我们也必须应对环境干扰：我们需要避开骑自行车的人，在红灯变红之前跑过马路，跨过垃圾而不撞到其他人。

We need to know how to get from point A to point B, even if we’ve never been there before.

我们需要知道如何从 A 点到达 B 点，即使我们以前从未去过那里。

And we need to know how vastly different environments — meandering sidewalks, a park with many trails, a fifth-floor apartment — connect to one another.

我们需要知道截然不同的环境——蜿蜒的人行道、有许多小径的公园、五楼的公寓——如何相互联系。

This kind of complex environment is hard to simulate in the lab.

这种复杂的环境很难在实验室中模拟。

But studying the sense of direction outside the lab, in an uncontrolled setting, can be even harder.

但在实验室之外、不受控制的环境中研究方向感可能会更加困难。

So, despite the excitement around the neural basis of navigation, “none of these neurons — neither place cells, nor grid cells, nor head direction cells — had been studied in the real world, outdoors,” Ulanovsky said.

因此，尽管围绕导航的神经基础令人兴奋，但“这些神经元——无论是位置细胞、网格细胞还是头部方向细胞——都没有在户外的现实世界中进行过研究，”乌拉诺夫斯基说。

“So I had, for many years, this dream that we would like to do that.

“所以多年来我一直有一个梦想，那就是我们想要做到这一点。

But for years, it stayed as a dream because how do you even approach this?”

但多年来，这一直只是一个梦想，因为你如何实现这一目标呢？”

In 2016, his team built a 200-meter-long tunnel at the Weizmann Institute and developed wireless systems to record the brain activity of Egyptian fruit bats as they flew through it.

2016年，他的团队在魏茨曼研究所建造了一条200米长的隧道，并开发了无线系统来记录埃及果蝠飞过隧道时的大脑活动。

The team reported in Science that place cells behaved differently in the tunnels than they had in the lab — a hint that a more complex experimental environment would be key to really understanding mammalian navigation.

研究小组在《科学》杂志上报告称，位置细胞在隧道中的行为与在实验室中的行为不同，这暗示更复杂的实验环境将是真正理解哺乳动物导航的关键。

In 2016, frustrated by a small, confining lab, researchers at the Weizmann Institute in Israel built a 200-meter-long tunnel to study bat navigation in a semi-realistic setting.

2016 年，以色列魏茨曼研究所的研究人员因实验室狭小、空间有限而感到沮丧，他们建造了一条 200 米长的隧道，在半现实的环境中研究蝙蝠的导航。

But a tunnel was still too confined for Ulanovsky.

但隧道对乌兰诺夫斯基来说仍然太狭窄。

He wanted to create conditions closer to the real world.

他想创造更接近现实世界的条件。

The answer came to him in 2018 as he was scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

2018 年，当他在澳大利亚大堡礁潜水时，他得到了答案。

“Being on an island there, it hit me that that’s a solution,” he recalled.

“在岛上的一座岛上，我突然意识到这是一个解决方案，”他回忆道。

“Suppose I find an island somewhere in the world” to use as a wild laboratory.

“假设我在世界某个地方找到一个岛屿”作为野生实验室。

He searched for an island far away from land (so his bats couldn’t escape and create ecological problems) that was not too big and not too small.

他寻找一个远离陆地（这样他的蝙蝠就无法逃脱并造成生态问题）、不太大也不太小的岛屿。

It had to be uninhabited by people and mostly barren (so bats wouldn’t hide in tall trees), and it couldn’t be a nature reserve (to avoid permitting issues).

它必须无人居住，大部分都是贫瘠的（这样蝙蝠就不会躲在高大的树上），而且它不能是一个自然保护区（以避免许可问题）。

“The conjunction of these things is pretty rare,” Ulanovsky said.

“这些事情的结合非常罕见，”乌拉诺夫斯基说。

His team homed in on 30 or 40 islands across the world that might work.

他的团队在全球 30 到 40 个可能可行的岛屿上进行了部署。

Only one was in the home range of the Egyptian fruit bats they study: Latham Island, in the Indian Ocean 25 miles east of Tanzania.

他们研究的埃及果蝠的栖息地只有一种：位于坦桑尼亚以东 25 英里的印度洋莱瑟姆岛。

Latham Island, a plot of land the size of about four soccer fields, was small enough for the researchers to contain and track the bats — and big enough to ensure that the bats couldn’t see from one end to the other.

莱瑟姆岛是一块大约四个足球场大小的土地，小到足以让研究人员控制和追踪蝙蝠，但又大到足以确保蝙蝠看不到从一端到另一端的情况。

Ulanovsky’s team was ready to watch as bats learned to navigate a complex habitat more like the one they evolved in.

乌兰诺夫斯基的团队已经准备好观察蝙蝠学会在一个复杂的栖息地中航行，这更像是它们进化的环境。

They implanted microwires, each a few micrometers thick, in the brains of six Egyptian fruit bats to record neural activity; the wires connected to a data logger, which stored the data.

他们在六只埃及果蝠的大脑中植入了每根几微米厚的微线，以记录神经活动；连接到存储数据的数据记录器的电线。

They brought the bats to the island on a boat, along with everything the scientists needed to sustain themselves for a few weeks, including tents, chairs, tables, generators, and refrigerators.

他们用船把蝙蝠带到了岛上，还带来了科学家们维持几周所需的一切，包括帐篷、椅子、桌子、发电机和冰箱。

They released the bats, usually at night, and tracked their positions as they flew across the island.

他们通常在晚上释放蝙蝠，并在它们飞过岛屿时追踪它们的位置。

At the end of every night, the researchers re-captured the bats to download data on the activity of head direction cells and other cells involved in navigation.

每天晚上结束时，研究人员都会重新捕获蝙蝠，以下载有关头部方向细胞和其他参与导航的细胞活动的数据。

By the end of the experiments, performed over two seasons in 2023 and 2024, the researchers had data from 301 flights.

到 2023 年和 2024 年两个赛季的实验结束时，研究人员获得了 301 次航班的数据。

Latham Island is a small, treeless plot of land that’s uninhabited aside from seabirds and, sometimes, a few fishermen.

莱瑟姆岛是一片没有树木的小土地，除了海鸟和有时还有一些渔民外无人居住。

In the absence of light pollution, at night the researchers’ camp sat below “the most amazing stars that you can imagine,” Ulanovsky said.

乌兰诺夫斯基说，在没有光污染的情况下，晚上研究人员的营地坐落在“你能想象到的最令人惊叹的星星”下面。

On the first couple of nights, as the bats began to explore Latham Island, their head direction cells fired crudely.

在最初的几个晚上，当蝙蝠开始探索莱瑟姆岛时，它们的头部方向细胞发出了粗暴的信号。

Some fired when the bats faced generally south, others while they faced generally east, west or north.

有些蝙蝠在面朝南时开火，另一些则在面朝东、西或北时开火。

But by night five or six, as the place grew more familiar to them, the cells had stabilized to fire in coordination with precise directions and did not change depending on where the animal was on the island.

但到了五六点的晚上，随着他们对这个地方越来越熟悉，细胞已经稳定地按照精确的方向协调发射，并且不会根据动物在岛上的位置而改变。

Because they could not see the entire island at once, their brains seemed to be stitching together small parts of the island into a global whole.

因为他们无法立即看到整个岛屿，所以他们的大脑似乎正在将岛屿的各个小部分拼接成一个全球整体。

The findings suggest that the global compass hypothesis is indeed correct, as some experiments have predicted.

研究结果表明，正如一些实验所预测的那样，全球指南针假说确实是正确的。

This makes sense, as “a compass should be a compass,” Dudchenko said.

杜琴科说，这是有道理的，因为“指南针就应该是指南针”。

“If you move to the next room, it should still be pointing in the right direction.”

“如果你移动到下一个房间，它应该仍然指向正确的方向。”

How did these cells anchor themselves to particular directions?

这些细胞如何将自己锚定到特定的方向？

They weren’t adjusting to celestial cues; the bats’ brain activity remained stable as the moon moved across the sky and when the moon and stars were covered by clouds.

他们没有适应天体的暗示；当月亮在天空中移动以及月亮和星星被云层覆盖时，蝙蝠的大脑活动保持稳定。

Nor were the head direction cells anchoring themselves to the Earth’s magnetic field, as some preliminary experiments by Ulanovsky’s team had suggested.

正如乌兰诺夫斯基团队的一些初步实验表明的那样，头部方向细胞也没有将自身锚定在地球磁场上。

The team hypothesizes that the bats anchored themselves to landmarks in their environment, such as the coastline, the experimenters’ tents, and their perches.

研究小组假设蝙蝠将自己固定在环境中的地标上，例如海岸线、实验者的帐篷和栖息地。

As they got to know the new space, the landmarks became part of their internal maps and cued the head direction cells to fire.

当他们了解新的空间时，地标就成为他们内部地图的一部分，并提示头部方向细胞放电。

The findings confirmed decades of lab work suggesting how this head direction cell system worked in smaller environments.

这些发现证实了数十年的实验室工作表明这种头部定向细胞系统如何在较小的环境中工作。

“It was an open question, one way or the other, whether the cells behaved the same way in large, natural environments,” Knierim said.

“不管怎样，细胞在大型自然环境中是否表现相同，这是一个悬而未决的问题，”克涅里姆说。

He and others applauded the study for recording the activity of these cells out in the wild, in a much bigger and more complex space than experiments could simulate.

他和其他人称赞这项研究记录了这些细胞在野外的活动，在比实验模拟的更大、更复杂的空间中。

“In this area of neuroscience, there’s just nothing like that,” he said.

“在神经科学领域，没有这样的事情，”他说。

Already, this real-world approach is bearing fruit.

这种现实方法已经取得了成果。

In November 2025, at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, Ulanovsky presented early data showing that the brain cells of bats navigating Latham Island encoded more information than they do inside the lab — for example, place cells not only recorded the bat’s location but also activated based on how fast the bat was going.

2025 年 11 月，在圣地亚哥神经科学学会会议上，乌拉诺夫斯基展示了早期数据，显示在莱瑟姆岛航行的蝙蝠的脑细胞编码的信息比实验室内的信息更多——例如，位置细胞不仅记录了蝙蝠的位置，而且还根据蝙蝠的移动速度而被激活。

All bat species can see, Ulanovsky said, but the Egyptian fruit bat, his study species, has “excellent vision, much better than rats or mice.” The bats probably use a combination of vision and echolocation to learn the layout of the land and tune their inner compass.

乌兰诺夫斯基说，所有蝙蝠物种都可以看到东西，但他的研究物种埃及果蝠具有“出色的视力，比大鼠或小鼠好得多”。蝙蝠可能结合视觉和回声定位来了解土地的布局并调整其内部指南针。

These preliminary findings make an “even better argument for doing natural experiments,” Dudchenko said.

杜琴科说，这些初步发现为“进行自然实验提供了更好的论据”。

“They suggest a new approach to how we do neuroscience.” Instead of crafting experiments that control for complexity, neuroscientists should embrace it, he said.

“他们为我们如何进行神经科学提出了一种新方法。”他说，神经科学家不应该精心设计控制复杂性的实验，而应该拥抱它。

As neuroscientists look beyond the lab, they’re also hoping to look beyond rats and bats.

当神经科学家将目光投向实验室之外时，他们也希望将目光投向老鼠和蝙蝠之外。

If you’ve spent any time navigating a city, you’ve surely employed your own head direction system.

如果您曾在城市中游览过，那么您肯定使用过自己的头部导航系统。

Knierim recalls walking in Manhattan; he thought he was heading east.

克涅里姆 (Knierim) 回忆起在曼哈顿散步的情景；他以为他正在向东行驶。

“When I hit the corner, and I’m expecting to see Second Avenue, and I see Lexington Avenue [instead] — my whole head, you know, my own perception of the world just spun around,” he said.

“当我走到街角时，我本以为会看到第二大道，但我却看到了列克星敦大道——我的整个头脑，你知道，我自己对世界的看法都在旋转，”他说。

“I can literally feel it inside.” When he realized his internal map was misaligned, he could feel it twist around him as his mental space caught up with his physical one.

“我真的能感觉到它在里面。”当他意识到他的内部地图错位时，他能感觉到它在他周围扭曲，因为他的精神空间追上了他的物理空间。

Not much is known about the neural basis of our own sense of direction.

我们对方向感的神经基础知之甚少。

Head direction cells have not yet been located in humans, though there is some evidence that they exist .

尽管有一些证据表明头部方向细胞存在，但尚未在人类中找到它们。

“We do have the same brain structure [as rodents and bats], so it’s not too crazy to think that those brain structures then have similar function,” Dudchenko said.

“我们确实拥有与啮齿动物和蝙蝠相同的大脑结构，因此认为这些大脑结构具有相似的功能并不算太疯狂，”杜琴科说​​。

Certainly, our experiences navigating our environments suggest that we have a sense of direction (some more than others).

当然，我们在环境中航行的经验表明我们有方向感（有些方向感比其他方向感强）。

The lack of human studies is a “major gap that we’re trying to fill,” said Suthana, the Duke neuroscientist.

杜克大学神经科学家苏塔纳说，缺乏人体研究是“我们正在努力填补的一个主要空白”。

With consent from epilepsy patients, Suthana and her team connected a new device to electrodes already implanted into their brains for presurgical monitoring.

经癫痫患者同意，Suthana 和她的团队将一种新设备连接到已植入患者大脑中的电极，以进行术前监测。

Then she recorded navigation cells in humans exploring a seminatural environment — a hospital room and hallway — to collect data on how navigational cells track the body and head as a person moves.

然后，她记录了人类探索半自然环境（医院房间和走廊）的导航细胞，以收集有关导航细胞如何在人移动时跟踪身体和头部的数据。

This was the first time such a study had been performed in human subjects.

这是首次在人类受试者中进行此类研究。

“Moving into these wilder, naturalistic environments really has the ability for us to test things or find things we would never see in the lab,” she said.

“进入这些更狂野、自然的环境确实让我们有能力测试事物或发现我们在实验室中永远不会看到的东西，”她说。

While 15 minutes wandering a hospital hallway isn’t exactly the wild, her team is working toward the goal of recording high-resolution brain activity in even more complex environments.

虽然在医院走廊里漫步 15 分钟并不算是疯狂，但她的团队正在努力实现在更复杂的环境中记录高分辨率大脑活动的目标。

“Maybe not on a remote island, but who knows?”

“也许不在一个偏远的岛屿上，但谁知道呢？”

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辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

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