LAURA LEE COLGIN Grid cells are neurons that create a map of an animal's surroundings in a part of the brain known as the medial entorhinal cortex1. They achieve this by firing when the animal passes through discrete, regularly spaced locations in the environment. These spatially periodic activity patterns are reminiscent of the temporally periodic theta-frequency waves (roughly 4-10 hertz) generated in the cortical electroencephalogram during spatial navigation — tempting an inference that theta rhythms underlie grid-cell responses. But on page 103 of this issue, Yartsev et al.2 challenge this idea by showing that, in the absence of theta rhythms, grid cells still fire in bats.
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机译：劳拉·李·科尔金（LAURA LEE COLGIN）网格细胞是神经元，可在大脑的内侧内嗅皮层1上创建动物周围环境的地图。他们通过在动物经过环境中离散且规则间隔的位置时开火来实现这一目标。这些空间周期性的活动模式使人联想到在空间导航过程中皮层脑电图中产生的时间周期性theta频率波（大约4-10赫兹）-试图推断theta节律是网格细胞响应的基础。但是在本期杂志的第103页上，Yartsev等人2通过证明在没有theta节奏的情况下，网格细胞仍会在蝙蝠中射击来挑战这一想法。
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