Brain keeps familiar routes intact as new experiences get layered on top, study suggests

Every time we move through a familiar environment, the hippocampus consults an internal map, a detailed spatial representation built up through repeated experience.

But what happens when something unexpected occurs on a well-known route?

Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn demonstrated in a mouse model that the brain does not redraw its maps from scratch.

Instead, it annotates them, preserving the underlying spatial layout while overlaying new information on top of the existing map.

The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...