| | |

Navigation Networks in the Brain

ByRichard Nissen Reading Time: 1 minute
Professor Kate Jeffery of University College London gave the annual address to the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) this year (2014). This article published in RIN’s Navigation News is, for me, a seminal step forward in describing the parameters of animal navigation and building a structure to delve deeper into how navigation might work.
Her idea that you need to know where North is in order to orientate your “map” makes sense of a whole lot of otherwise incomprehensible research. Knowing where North is without a map does not get you home.
Richard Nissen
Editor September 2014

Brain Feature

Similar Posts

BTO Cuckoo Tracking

Please note that the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) carry out a brilliant Cuckoo tracking project. We think that we need to be sure that we are clear how fledglings make the journey to their wintering grounds.  As they have never been there before, how do they know how to get there? If any of…

Cuckoos – BTO satellite

For those of us following the BTO satellite tagged Cuckoos, we can see Spring is well on its way – three birds have already left their winter locations in the Congo rainforest and are at their stopover sites in West Africa. Later this month, rested and loaded with the fat that will fuel their journeys, they will…

The Common Toad: Bufo, bufo.bufo

Observations from the “Observer’s book of British wild animals” first published in 1938. It was compiled by W.J.Stoke. “I found this piece fascinating as it describes the navigational skills of Toads.  There are also other works that suggests that Newts operate in a similar way, making long journeys out of the water but not getting…

Calcified Pineal Gland

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1419179/ This link takes you to an interesting article covering what happens when the Pineal Gland is calcified.  The fact that calcification of the Pineal really impairs navigational ability makes us think that this proves that the Pineal is critical to animal navigation. Richard Nissen Editor

Does the geomagnetic field intensity affect the flight path of homing pigeons?

Analysis of GPS recorded tracks of intact trigeminal sectioned pigeons. Conditioning studies have shown that the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve is functionally involved in the perception of the geomagnetic field intensity. However, homing experiments conducted in the field with homing pigeons demonstrated that trigeminal mediation of magnetoreception is neither necessary nor sufficient for…