Not many people think about what it’s like to be a bat, but for those who do, it’s enlightening and potentially groundbreaking for understanding aspects of the human brain and nervous system.
Cynthia Moss, a member of the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program at the University of Maryland, College Park, Md., is one of few researchers who spend time trying to get into the heads of bats.
Her new research suggests there is more to studying bats than figuring out how they process sound to distinguish environments. Partially supported by the National Science Foundation, her research paper appears in the June 18 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“For decades it’s been recognized that a bat’s voice produces sounds that give the bat information about the location of objects,” says Moss. “We’re now recognizing that every time a bat produces a sound there are changes in brain activity that may be important for scene analysis, sensorimotor control and spatial memory and navigation.”
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