GPS CELLS,AGAIN

WHAT IF ARTIFICIAL GPS CELLS, ARE INSERTED IN ROBOTIC BRAINS?

Taken from Quantamagazine,Article written by: Jordana Cepelewicz 

In 2014: John O'Keefe (British-American), Edvard Moser and May Britt-Moser (both Norwegian), shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, for the discovery of neurons constituents of a positioning system (GPS cells), located in the human cerebral hippocampus. For those who thought that this finding only served to guide us spatially externally and internally, the recent discovery of additional functions of these cells means that we are just at the beginning of a cognitive revolution of cyclopean proportions, of knowing the process of generating hypotheses  very close to  the same human thought. The study was conducted at the University of California, San Francisco by Loren Frank: 1-Frank and his team made  trained   rats run  by the central parts of W-shaped labyrinths, while other researchers monitored their positional neurons (mappers of the location of the rat). 2-When the rats were about to reach the other end of the central part, where they would decide which place to turn (right or left), the researchers noticed that the teta brain rhythm coincided with  the firing of  positional neurons, warning that as long as the rat did not decide which direction to turn, the position cells for both trajectories continued to fire  simultaneously in the central arm of the labyrinth. 3-As the rat approached the point where it should change direction, it was expected that position neurons would continue to be firing   simultaneously in events called theta cycles. 4-Instead and, until the rat turned, the position cells for each trajectory no longer fired   simultaneously, but in the form of alternate theta cycles. According to Frank and his team, the sequences of firing   of 125-milliseconds seemed to generate different brain hypotheses about the immediate future of the rats in a continuous, consistent and incredibly regular way, offering the animals, different future hypothetical scenarios, which allowed them  to weigh quickly and flexibly  the different scenarios, choosing the best option with opportunities to change options and even go back, useful  option to confront natural predators. For Frank, coding hypotheses is an explicit representation of the thinking and theta cycles: fundamental computational units, which the hippocampus uses to choose mostly abstract things, supported by previous experiences, adding that cyclical  firing   of  position cells imply, the development of cognitive faculties: imagination, planning and decision- making processes.