Brain in GPS mode

  This years Noble Price for medicine has gone to the Moser’s and O’Keefe for work on the brain which has a GPS like function (Surprisingly it is the brain which created the GPS-vice versa). There are ‘place cells’ and ‘grid cells’ and the way these function to memorise the place where you parked your car or how we find our way each time we visit a city.

  It is a matter of nerve cells in your brain which get activated as soon as you are in a place (place cells) and these are interconnected through ‘grid cells’. There are a billion nerve cells in your brain and the way they establish links is a matter of this study. Thus we can recall how your teacher punished you in the seventh standard (the classroom situated on the first floor next to the staircase) for a particular activity or the emotional stress or trauma you underwent on the death of your beloved one.

  You can remember the umpteen travels you made in your lifetime and the maps your brain has created and stored in the number of data bases. I can relate this to the number of travels I made between Mumbai and Raigarh(in CG) with various stations as place cells and the distances between them as grid cells and I can recall the turns my rail engine takes, through my window, on some of these places and i know that to reach Manmad from Nashik the train has to take a deep right and to take me to Chhatisgarh from Nagpur it has to take a deep left.

  Long back i had read how these nerve cells need to be tended to through a Mahesh Yogi lecture and the best way to keep maintaining the bridges between these nerve cells activated is to meditate for long periods of time. Bad lifestyle and habits may lead to mistaken metabolism and disease further leading to dementia and Alzheimer’s.