Grid Cell

Grid cells are neurons in the brain's entorhinal cortex that fire in a hexagonal pattern as an animal moves, forming a cognitive map of its environment. Current research focuses on understanding the underlying mechanisms generating these patterns, often employing recurrent neural networks and exploring concepts like conformal isometry to explain the observed hexagonal grid structure. This research is significant for both neuroscience, providing insights into spatial navigation and memory, and artificial intelligence, where grid cell-inspired models are being integrated into architectures to improve spatial reasoning and generalization capabilities in machine learning systems.