What neuroscience can tell us about our sense of place and sense of direction.

The 'architecture' of cognition. How is spatial information represented in the brain? Kate Jeffery is Professor of Neuroscience, Faculty of Brain Sciences. UCL. 0:00 - Introduction. What information do we need when navigating space. City legibility. 1:48 - How do people form representations of places. Spaces that are difficult to navigate. 3:38 - Neuroanatomy. Primary and secondary areas of the brain. The cortex. 5:18 - The subcortex and hippocampus. 6:29 - The parietal lobe. The 'egocentric' map. Parietal damage. 9:40 - Habit based large scale movement. The subcortical striatum. 11:45 - The role of the hippocampus. 12:58 - Neuroimaging. 14:15 - Virtual reality. 16:28 - Identifying and 'recording' single neurons. 21:00 - 'Patterns' of nerve impulses. 21:42 - 'Place cells' and 'mapping'. 23:22 - In what sense are place cells about space. 24:35 - Mapping. 25:22 - The search for a form of isomorphism. 28:00 - The hippocampus, place cells, memory and 'mapping'. 28:30 - London taxi drivers. 29:43 - Testing on humans. Do humans have 'place' cells. 31:20 - Spatial imagination and coherence. 33:07 - 'Head direction cells'. 37:15 - The entorhinal cortex, neuronal activity and spatial location. Distance and direction. The 'grid' cells. 45:00 - The place cells, the head direction cells, the grid cells and border cells. 46:00 - The work of Kevin Lynch. Edges, landmarks. 51:15 - Incoherent or less coherent spaces. 53:00 - Rotational symmetry. 53:45 - Mirror symmetry. 54:50 - Distant landmarks. 57:00 - Can the brain make a 3D map of space. 59:30 - More advanced 'mapping' of the brain.