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100 bats and a long, dark tunnel: one neuroscientist’s quest to unlock the secrets of 3D navigation

How does the brain know where it is? Nachum Ulanovsky hopes his flying friends can help him find the answer.
  1. Alison Abbott
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Nachum Ulanovsky with one of his research bats. Credit: David Vaaknin for Nature

On a sun-parched patch of land in Rehovot, Israel, two neuroscientists peer into the darkness of a 200-metre-long tunnel of their own design. The fabric panels of the snaking structure shimmer in the heat, while, inside, a study subject is navigating its dim length. Finally, out of the blackness bursts a bat, which executes a mid-air backflip to land upside down, hanging at the tunnel’s entrance.

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Nature 559, 165-168 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05648-2

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