
How the brain encodes landmarks that help us navigate - prostoalex
http://news.mit.edu/2020/brain-encodes-landmarks-navigate-0310
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oblib
Interesting. I've spent a lot of time "bushwhacking" off trail in our
wilderness areas and one of the things I learned early on was to make a point
to focus on landmarks, and more importantly, to turn around and look at where
I'd just been so I could recall it on the way back because it's a completely
different view.

It's a lot easier to travel off trail in areas with hills and hollows than
flat lands with little variation in terrain and flora, and a compass makes a
huge difference in that case, but even then stopping and turning around to
look for something even a bit out of the ordinary can make a huge difference
in rather you begin to panic over being lost or not.

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PrefixKitten
Lol, I think you should rephrase yourself a little. I first read that as "I
spent a lot of time bushwhacking off"

~~~
ComputerGuru
Reddit is that way.

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pugworthy
Back when I worked in game development (level design), I found a really
interesting pattern in World of Warcraft.

Basically, if you walked down a path, there would be something distinct every
20 seconds of walking. It might be a big rock on the side of the path, a bend,
a little bridge over a creek, etc. Just something.

I think firstly, this served to help you feel like you were going the right
way. A long and featureless path makes you wonder if you should turn around.
One with features visible in the distance makes you want to keep going to see
what's ahead.

Second (and relevant to the article), it helps you with navigation because it
gives you easy to remember references.

Another comment to add, separate from the game thing. This reminds me of a
patent a co-worker just put out:
[http://www.freepatentsonline.com/10578449.html](http://www.freepatentsonline.com/10578449.html)

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mp3jeep01
This is incredibly interesting, and something I wouldn't have thought much of
before becoming a parent.

Since our son was able to speak, he was able to vocalize when we were near a
family member's house (I saw this weekly as we drove from the San Francisco
Peninsula up into the city). I was always curious what triggered him to know
"we're nearby". We passed several unique structures (overpasses, apartment
buildings, signs) but I was incredibly curious which ones he associated with
being nearby this particular relative.

Eventually when he was a little older, and we asked, he was able to say a
specific color building "told him" he was close. Super interesting. Child
development and understanding in itself is so amazing to watch.

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huanwin
This is a cool example of science progressing in real time. I had heard
previously that the hippocampus was related to navigation (the taxi driver
study:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC18253/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC18253/)).

On the Wikipedia page for 'Retrosplenial cortex'
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrosplenial_cortex#cite_note...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrosplenial_cortex#cite_note-:0-2)),
the intro text pulls on a source from 2009 to say, "its location close to
visual areas and also to the hippocampal spatial/memory system suggest it may
have a role in mediating between perceptual and memory functions."

And here there's new research making that link between perception and memory
more clear!

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whymauri
One of my best friends was a long-term undergrad assistant on this project. It
was always an eyebrow-raiser (and conversation starter!) when she declared
that her research was developing "mouse VR."

Very cool to see it spotlighted on the MIT news site.

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waterheater
In both research and shipped products roboticists have been using landmarks
for real-time simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM):

[http://ethaneade.org/eadeICCV2007.pdf](http://ethaneade.org/eadeICCV2007.pdf)

[https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/45226/Fact...](https://smartech.gatech.edu/bitstream/handle/1853/45226/Factor%20Graphs%20and%20GTSAM%20A%20Hands-
on%20Introduction%20GT-RIM-CP%26R-2012-002.pdf)

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izzydata
On a semi-related note did anyone watching the movie 1917 feel like the entire
set was less than a mile wide? I was somewhat passively keeping track of
distance covered and directions turned in my head and something just felt
horribly off.

I swear they were on that truck for like 7 seconds and moved 100 feet.

~~~
whymauri
Yeah, there's definitely a sort of implied (or attempted) transition in
several scenes. From leaving the forest to reaching the cherry bushes, for
example. The camerawork changes a bit and they subtlely crest a hill into the
cherry bushes, if I recall correctly. I took these sorts of camera techniques
to imply chronological progression.

I could discuss a few more but don't want to spoil. I had the pleasure of
watching it twice in theatres and the cinematography, lighting, and editing
just blew me away.

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zapttt
this "research" is the bio version of just running a benchmark on newer
hardware and validating what was already known in hopes of stealing citations.

optically blocking neurons is such a cheap shot to validate old knowledge that
was painstakingly researched with older tools. and they didn't even blast
other random regions as a control.

