Even though you probably don’t notice, your brain is constantly keeping tabs on where your body is in the space around you and where different body parts are in relation to each other. Researchers have been trying to better understand that phenomenon, called body schema, for a while. So far, they don’t really think there’s a specific region dedicated to this self-spatial awareness. Instead, it seems to come from a coordination of many different regions.
Now, neuroscientists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have discovered so-called posture cells that could help experts better understand how this coordination works.
The group tracked 11 rats as they roamed around, all while recoding activity in brain regions called the posterior parietal cortex and the frontal motor cortex. Both are areas involved in voluntary movements.
They found that certain neurons in these areas were much more active when the rats held different ...
