Memories of places "drift" across the brain as they are carried by different sets of neurons over time, a new study in mice suggests.
Historically, neuroscientists thought that memories of locations and features of our immediate environment were encoded by specific "place cells." These place cells, located in a key memory center called the hippocampus, light up when a mammal enters the specific environment they correspond to — say, the door to a home or a waterfall on a hiking trail. It was thought that the activation of these place cells acted as a kind of map in the brain by encoding lasting memories of specific places as well as enabling navigation.
