New cell to boost Alzheimer’s fight
A NEW kind of brain cell has been discovered that will help us to understand how we remember where we left objects, such as car keys and mobile phones.
Damage to these cells may help explain memory loss in certain kinds of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
The existence of GPS-like brain cells, which can store maps of the places we have been, like our kitchen or a beach on holiday, was already widely known.
However, scientists say this discovery shows there is also a type of brain cell sensitive to the distance and direction of objects, which can store object locations on these maps.
The research, led by Dr Steven Poulter and Dr Colin Lever (the lab head) from Durham University and codirected by Dr Thomas Wills from UCL, found Vector Trace cells remember where things were located.
Dr Poulter gives one example: “Vector Trace cells help me remember where my daughter buried her seashells, ie three metres from my deckchair in that direction.”
Dr Wills, who co-directed the research, said: “Storing distance and direction data in memory is essential for mental maps which can allow us to navigate to remembered goals and Vector Trace cells are a likely candidate for how our brain achieves this.”
Dr Lever said: “It looks like Vector Trace cells connect to creative brain networks which help us to plan our actions and imagine complex scenarios in our mind’s eye.
“Vector trace cells acting together likely allow us to recreate the spatial relationships between ourselves and objects and between the objects in a scene, even when those objects are not directly visible to us.”
Brain cells that make up the biological equivalent of a satellite-navigation system were first discovered in the 1970s by Professor John O’Keefe and in the 2000s by Professors Edvard and May-Britt Moser.
Their discovery shed light on one of neuroscience’s great mysteries – how we know where we are in space – and won them the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Dr Poulter added: “Vector Trace cells should help progress the science of Alzheimer’s disease.
“The discovery of Vector Trace cells is important as the area of the brain they are found in is one of the first to be attacked by brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s, which could explain why a common symptom and key early ‘warning sign’ in Alzheimer’s is the losing or misplacement of objects.”