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September 13, 2010

BPS: Brain Positioning System


What happens in your brain when you get lost or forget something? Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist Amy Shelton believes she can find the answer. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she's testing human spatial recognition. Study subjects learn and recall their way around a virtual maze while an MRI scans their brains. By analyzing MRI images of blood flow in the human brain, Shelton can get a picture of how the brain learns and recalls the spatial world outside the body. By understanding those processes, she believes she can develop techniques that will help improve human memory.

Credit: National Science Foundation


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