“All mammals – including, probably, humans – have a global positioning system in their brains, which consists of at least three different cellular components. John O’Keefe, a neuroscientist at University College London, discovered the first component of the brain’s GPS in 1971. While recording nerve cell activity in the hippocampus of freely moving rats, he found neurons that fire only when the animals are in a specific area of their enclosure, and speculated that these ‘place’ cells play an important role in creating mental maps of the environment.”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2014/dec/03/3d-compass-cells-bat-brain
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