[Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] Norwegian research

[lisa]

This is a two part email. First part about a research in Norway and second part a question to one of the authors.


Hi,
Thought this would be of interest. It comes from NTNU The Norwegian
University of Science and Technology. It is about navigation. And I
thought it might help explain why blind persons can understand perspective
and 3-dimension?  And the grids that are formed sound similar to the
triangulation used in GIS for map making. 

What do you think?

Science article

 Francesca Sargolini and colleagues have discovered cells in the medial
entorhinal cortex that respond to head-direction as well as position in
the grid coordinate system. Combining information about position,
direction and speed, these conjunctive cells may be part of the mechanism
by which the position vector in the grid-cell network is updated as the
animal moves through a two-dimensional environment. The paper appears in [
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5774/758 ]today’s issue of
Science. See separate story about the findings in [
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5774/680 ]Science’s News
Focus section. See also article at [
http://www.forskning.no/Artikler/2006/mai/1146675051.88 ]forskning.no. 


Also another article from Science

NEUROSCIENCE:
The Map in the Brain: Grid Cells May Help Us NavigateKaren Heyman 
A newfound class of neurons reported on page [
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/312/5774/758 ]758 of this
issue of Science enables the brain to perform complex spatial
navigation--and may even help form memories. ([
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5774/680 ]Read more.)

http://www.cbm.ntnu.no/
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5774/758
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/312/5774/680

article in Norwegian
This Is How You Navigate
http://www.forskning.no/Artikler/2006/mai/1146675051.88
Map in Our Brain
http://www.forskning.no/Artikler/2005/juni/1119015013.06



Second part

Hi,
I sent a question to Prof. Moser director of lab at NTNU and one of the
authors of the paper about this and he sent a reply.


My question:

In an article about Esref Armagan, a blind artist, in  New Science,
January 27, 2005, Dr. John Kennedy states that  "The geometry of 
direction is common to vision and touch." and "knowledge about
perspective, he [Kennedy] has come to believe, is acquired in similar ways
for both [blind, sighted persons]" and "Where a sighted person looks out,
a blind person reaches out, and they will discover the
same things" 

My question is would not the findings of Dr. Francesca Sargolini et.al.
help explain this?

Prof. Moser answer

Yes, to some extent they would. The grid cells are independent of whether
the animals see or not; they are hard-wired and all that is necessary to
make them fire is the animal's (person's) own motion (the brain is
calculating position based on how far and in what direction the animal is
moving). The role of vision is to calibrate the grid map, aligning the
peaks
of the grid with the landmarks (features) of the particular environment,
but this can be done with stimuli from other sensory modalities too.

Regards,
Lisa

P.S  In my question I wrote "help explain this" that perhaps was not the
best wording because I am sure Dr. Kennedy has explained it very well.
Perhaps should have written "additional information that explains".





Lisa Yayla
Regards,
Lisa