Brain activity of free-flying bats

Date:  April 10, 2018

Source:  Johns Hopkins University

Summary:

Researchers have developed a way to study the brain of a bat as it flies, recording for the first time what happens as a roving animal focuses and refocuses its attention.

Johns Hopkins University researchers have developed a way to study the brain of a bat as it flies, recording for the first time what happens as a roving animal focuses and refocuses its attention.

This groundbreaking advance allows us to see what happens in the brains of naturally behaving animals, uninhibited by laboratory constraints. Because bats share the same basic brain structure as all mammals, including humans, the achievement, published today in the journal eLife, deepens our understanding of what happens in the brain as we move through the world.

"If you want to understand how the brain operates in the real world, you have to have the animal moving through the world in a natural way," said co-author Melville Wohlgemuth, a postdoctoral fellow. "This idea of recording the brain without wires is brand new. And no one has used it to understand how an animal senses the world and reacts to that information."

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