Compass and map neurons in the avian brain (Neu06)

• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 395940726

To achieve a comprehensive understanding of magnetoreception and vertebrate navigation, it is important to know whether the spatial cell types encoding places (map), directions (compass), and goals discovered in mammals also exist in birds, the most studied long-distance navigators. This project represents the journey of a 12-year quest to find neurons in the avian brain that code for processes that enable a computation of map and compass. Such neurons are key to understanding how short and long-distance navigation is represented in the brain. By combining the joint expertise of three labs, we will search with single cell recordings in freely moving and/or flying birds for avian hippocampal neurons that code for relevant spatial properties that inform the animal about its present location, goal, and heading direction.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1372: Magnetoreception and navigation in vertebrates: from biophysics to brain and behaviour
• International Connection: Israel
• Applicant Institution: Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Onur Güntürkün; Professor Dr. Henrik Mouritsen; Professor Nachum Ulanovsky, Ph.D.