Rodent Neural Activity Has a Geometric Structure (forbes.com)

TheAlexKnapp writes: In a recent paper (abstract), a team used techniques from computational topology to look at the neural activity in the rat hippocampus as it solved a maze. Mathematician Kevin Knudson explains the findings: "This is the first time geometric structure has been found intrinsically in neural data. Certainly such a structure is to be expected since the rat's place cells keep track of the geometry of the environment, but this result is confirmation that it can be detected using only the pattern of correlations among the neurons. And it suggests that such geometric structure is a property of the underlying place cell network and not a result of the spatial structure of the input cells."