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Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science have discovered that individual brain cells can simultaneously track both physical location and complex social relationships in groups of animals.
The research, published in Science, focused on the hippocampus — the part of the brain responsible for spatial navigation and social memory.
While scientists knew the hippocampus served both these functions, they previously thought these might be separate processes handled by different neurons. What this study unveiled is that the same neurons can simultaneously track where others are located AND their social relationships, creating a holistic social-spatial map.
To give an example: If you’re at a party, your hippocampus helps you remember where your friends are in the space, who they typically hang out with, what their social standing is and whether or not it’s safe to introduce them to your other friend’s ex-girlfriend — and per the new research, it does that all with the same brain cells at the same time.
Quick, Robin, to the bat cave!
“We studied Egyptian fruit bats, which are highly social mammals, and focused on the hippocampus, a brain area that in previous studies has been shown to be important for memories of social identities, episodic events and spatial locations,” the researchers explained.
“We hypothesized that in natural scenarios, when all of these disparate aspects occur simultaneously, hippocampal neurons would bind together all of these different types of information.”
The study marks the first time scientists have recorded neural activity in freely interacting groups of wild social animals of both sexes.
To ensure that the data reflects real-world conditions, the team constructed an artificial cave filled with advanced sensors, and allowed a swarm of Egyptian fruit bats to fly around within the enclosure freely. By monitoring the bats’ interactions, behaviors and brain functions, they were able to observe how the brain processes social dynamics.
Turns out, bat brains are social butterflies — just more leathery and weird. Photo by Yuval Barkai/Weizmann Institute of Science
According to the researchers, their findings “combine the historically disparate views on hippocampal function, which suggested that the hippocampus is important for encoding memory, social identity or spatial maps. Here, we have shown that all of these factors are represented together in the same neural network.”
To put it all very simply: the hippocampus doesn’t just make a spatial map; it makes a social map, too.
This discovery opens new avenues for understanding how social animals, including humans, navigate their complex social environments. It could have implications for understanding social behavior disorders and might lead to new approaches in treating conditions affecting social cognition.
The findings also raise intriguing questions about the evolution of social behavior and how the brain adapted to process increasingly complex social information while maintaining its spatial mapping capabilities.
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