The Contour is one of two new products from Pittsburgh-based startup, Kaarta (there's also the smaller Stencil), designed for handheld mapping of spaces by architects, engineers and construction workers.
"Place cells" provide an internal map of space; "head-direction cells" signal the direction we are facing, similar to an internal compass; and "grid cells" chart out space in a manner akin to latitude and longitude.
The owl coordinates what it sees and hears in a part of its brain called the optic tectum, where it merges auditory and visual maps of space.
We report that a rudimentary map of space is already present when 2½-week-old rat pups explore an open environment outside the nest for the first time.
Each drive captures thousands of images as well as a full point cloud (a 3D map of space defined by dots that represent surfaces) and GPS data.
They are a fundamental component of the wider circuit of spatially responsive hippocampal formation neurons that make up the neural cognitive map of space [4].
With the increasing convergence of particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology, the European Space Agency (ESA) this week published a road map of space missions and technology development that it will aim for between 2015 and 2025.
One reason for this might be that the participants associated the episodic memory with the existing semantic maps of space to support their navigation in the given novel environment [36].
