BeeSpace · Neural representation of space: From individual to social place learning in bees

With ease, we daily navigate through our places of residence. From any familiar place, we can compute the shortest route to our workplace or to our favorite coffee shop. Additionally, we can flexibly adjust our route, if a road is suddenly blocked. This flexibility in route planning is based on a topological representation of different places in our brain (cognitive map). While place cells, a neuronal substrate of cognitive maps, have been identified in diverse species across the vertebrate lineage, a cognitive map is highly contentious in insects. Among insects, bees, especially, demonstrate remarkable navigational feats including taking novel shortcuts, which requires a highly sophisticated spatial memory. Given their limited neural bandwidth, it is likely that insects use computationally less demanding navigational strategies compared to a cognitive map. Such strategies have been implicated in the ‘insect base model’ which is centered on remembering vectors bound to views of the terrestrial landscape. Although this model can explain many behavioral findings in navigating insects, the underlying neural mechanisms are not entirely understood. Due to technical constraints of monitoring brain activity in freely moving insects, it is unclear how space is represented in the insect brain. With neural recordings from freely foraging bees, I recently identified cells exhibiting a spatial tuning that strikingly resembles the one of vertebrate place cells. These ground-breaking findings represent the foundation for my proposal to study the neural basis of insect navigation. The cutting-edge recording techniques, which I recently developed, will enable me to gain unprecedented insights into how the insect solves navigational tasks. Understanding how insects navigate through their home terrain with numerically simpler neural circuits, will help us to reveal innovative ways to design autonomously navigating vehicles.