We all remember the incredible pass he makes Lionel Messi Nahuel Molina during the tough match against the Netherlands in the quarterfinals of the Qatar 2022 World Cup. It was a no-look pass or also called no-look-pass.
Something similar happened a few days ago when his current team, Inter Miami, faced the New York Red Bulls. Over there, “The Flea” surprised again with a goal assist without first looking at his teammate who could have scored on the scoreboard. How does Messi know where he has a teammate without looking up?
In addition to Messi fans and lovers of good football, several researchers ask the same question. A recent study in mice, published in Nature Communications by scientists from Peking University, China, in collaboration with the Argentine physicist Emilio Kropffof the Leloir Institute Foundation (FIL), provides a concrete explanation.
According to the publication, a subarea of the hippocampus called CA1 It is capable of generating multiple spatial representations of oneself and others at the same time, favoring the “I” as a point of reference. Experience and learning redefine and improve socio-spatial skills, as also verified by the authors of the work.
“In 2018, it was shown for the first time that the CA1 subzone of the hippocampus, an area of the brain that we use to form and store maps of our environment, and that It is essential to orient ourselves, it is also used to represent the position of fellow humans. This was very important because it showed that we use the same structures to represent ourselves and others and it was suggested that It could be something similar to mirror neurons”he explained Emilio Kropffhead of the Laboratory of Brain Physiology and Algorithms at the FIL and one of the authors of the article, to the CyTA-Leloir Agency.
“However, for these studies passive mice had been used, which simply observed, and then the question remained open as to whether one really represents the position of the other using the environment as a reference, for example, where they are standing on the court with respect to the goal. , or if, on the contrary, it does so with respect to oneself,” Kropff added.
These animals had the freedom to move and interact within an open environment. Environment that the Argentine was able to study and then direct the analysis of the data to help design the experimental part, which he carried out in China led by the Dr. Chenglin Miao in female mice.
“Place cells in the hippocampus represent a rodent’s position within an environment. Furthermore, recent experiments show that the CA1 subfield of a passive observer also represents the position of the so-called “conspecific”, the spatial task-performing part of an environment. In this study we investigate representation of others during free behavior and in a task in which mice learned to follow to a conspecific to obtain a reward,” the researchers began to report in Nature.
“And we found that most cells represent the position of others relative to one’s own position (social vector cells) rather than the environment, with a predominance of purely egocentric coding modulated by context and mouse identity. Learning a search task improved the tuning of social vector cells, but their number remained unchanged. Taken together, our results suggest that the hippocampus flexibly encodes the position of others in multiple coordinate systems, although favoring the me as a reference point”, the experts summarized.
“What we discovered is quite surprising: apparently, multiple perspectives of the other coexist in the hippocampus, using different frames of reference. And this is a new concept. One might think that the advantage is that they change the different types of interactions that I can have with that other: It is better to represent an archer in relation to the environment, because if he moved away from the goal it is better for me to kick, For example; On the other hand, perhaps it is better for me to represent my partner in relation to me to know which side I have to make a pass to,” Kropff said.
The Argentine researcher specified that within these varied perspectives that can “light up” together in the hippocampus, The researchers detected that there is one, called “egocentric social vector”, which is present in a greater number of neurons. “In this perspective, where the other is standing in relation to one matters more than information about the environment; but not only in terms of how far it is from me, but also at what angle in relation to where my head is pointing,” Kropff said.
One of the peculiarities observed by scientists was knowing whether those representations were static or changed with training the mice to chase each other. They were trained for this, and every time someone caught up with another, they were given a reward.
Thus, they observed that the mice learned over time and became more efficient in pursuit, while their representations of “egocentric social vector” improved. “This does not happen because the number of neurons in that representation increases, but because the responses are optimized. Furthermore, it shows, for the first time, that the representations of the other in the mammalian hippocampus are plastic and can be improved with training in social tasks, in which knowing where the other person is can lead to greater rewards,” highlighted the specialist.
Experts clarify that, as occurs with fundamental (or basic) research studies, these results do not have an immediate direct application, although multiple studies and subsequent follow-ups can be derived from them.
“This contributes to understanding how we represent each other in social situations. In the long term, she continued, it could help us understand what is happening in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, in which the first thing that is affected is the hippocampus. It could also have an impact in the area of artificial intelligence, to design machines capable of interacting with us in a domestic environment,” Kropff concluded.
