The research, led by Marco Abrate, Caswell Barry, and Thomas Wills at UCL, and published in the International Conference on Learning Representations, reports that changes in early movement behaviour could play a key role in the development of the internal maps found in the hippocampus, a brain region essential for memory and navigation.

Using cameras to track how young rats move through space, the team captured detailed movement data across early development. They then used this real-world data to build AI models that explored how the changing movement patterns drive the brain to develop a sense of place. Rather than assuming that spatial understanding emerges solely from hardwired genetic programmes, the researchers asked whether the gradual process of learning to move — from clumsy crawling to coordinated running — might itself shape the brain.

The team identified three distinct movement stages in rat pups during the first weeks of life. In the first stage, “crawl,” covering roughly the first two weeks after birth, pups moved with uncoordinated limbs. By around 16 days old they had progressed to “walk,” with more stable and directed movement. Finally, by about 20 days old, they reached the “run” stage, with fast, coordinated locomotion resembling that of adults. They then trained AI networks on simulated versions of these movement patterns, giving the network a virtual rat’s eye view of the world to recreate how animals experience their environment as they develop. Given this view along with information about speed and direction matching each developmental stage, the network had to predict what it would see next. No further information was provided: any sense of location had to be discovered from the statistics of movement alone.

What emerged was striking. Neurons that respond to specific locations appeared in the network in the same order as in the brain. Cells encoding head direction appeared first, then cells encoding location — known as place cells, for which John O’Keefe at UCL was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2014 - and finally, when adult-stage inputs were added, cells resembled a fully formed brain’s navigation system. This sequential emergence mirrors the known biological timeline of how these neurons develop in young rats.

The model also generated a testable prediction: that young location-encoding cells should fire differently depending on which way the animal is heading. The team confirmed this by analysing real brain recordings from developing rats — a key validation showing that the model not only reproduces known biology but correctly anticipates new observations.

The work provides a mechanistic link between early physical experience and brain development. By showing that realistic patterns of early movement can shape spatial maps in an AI system, the study offers concrete predictions for future experiments in developing animals.

Beyond basic neuroscience, the findings carry a broader message: how you move through and experience the world shapes how your brain develops. This principle may extend well beyond rats — hinting that the richness of early physical experience plays a fundamental role in wiring the brain for spatial awareness and navigation in all animals, including humans. Understanding this process could shed light on developmental conditions affecting spatial awareness, and may also inform the design of AI systems that learn to navigate through interaction with their environment, rather than relying on pre-programmed representations.

 

Links

Research article: https://openreview.net/forum?id=8bM7MkxJee

Conference: https://iclr.cc

Barry Lab: https://barry-lab.com