Credit: Joseph Monaco/Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
A new study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Applied Physics Laboratory will combine research into navigational planning in brains with autonomous robotic swarms to drive advances in both fields. In this illustration, based on research into rat brain activity, measurements of brain activity can be translated into mapping instructions. Within the large circle on the right, the upper left circular image shows a neuron firing rate as the animal moved through space; the image at upper right shows theta rhythms from the hippocampus during the same movement. These are combined to create the bottom image, which shows phase attractors — a key element to creating a map based on those movements. The large circular image on the left shows, in red and orange, the predicted position of the rat in space from the analysis on the right; the blue line shows the rat’s actual path.