Children as young as five can navigate a 'Tiny Town'

A playground scene in Tiny Town. (Dilks lab)

Many behavioral studies suggest that using landmarks to navigate through large-scale spaces — known as map-based navigation — is not established until around age 12. 

A neuroscience study at Emory University counters that assumption. Through experiments combining brain scans and a virtual environment the researchers dubbed Tiny Town, they showed that five-year-olds have the brain system that supports map-based navigation. 

The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the finding, the first neural evidence that this cognitive ability is in place in such young children. 

“While large-scale navigation abilities certainly continue to develop throughout childhood, our findings show that the underlying neural system is established remarkably early,” says Yaelan Jung, first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Emory’s Department of Psychology. 

“Rather than taking a decade or more, map-based navigation is underway in half that time,” adds Daniel Dilks, associate professor of psychology and senior author of the study. “Five-year-olds have the brain system enabling them to find their way around a tiny, virtual town. They not only know that the ice cream store in the mountain region is different than the ice cream store in the lake region, they know how to navigate the streets to get to each of them.”

Read the full story here.

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Developing a new approach to control a dangerous, invasive mosquito in Ethiopia

Edilawit Mesfine, left, and Edel Seifu, both from Jigjiga University, collect data and larvae from a construction site. (Photo by Kim Awbrey)

Emory University received $2.8 million in funding from the Gates Foundation to support its work to develop and test a high-tech, low-cost method to control an invasive mosquito that poses a growing threat of urban malaria in Africa. The three-year project is focused on three cities in Ethiopia: Jigjiga, Semera and Logiya. 

The project’s novel approach to combating malaria combines on-the-ground knowledge of human and mosquito behaviors with detailed environmental imagery from drones and NASA satellites. Machine learning techniques will be applied to the data to develop a model — powered by artificial intelligence — for targeted public health interventions. 

The aim is to efficiently control populations of the invasive Anopheles stephensi mosquito by first, identifying water sources that are most likely to harbor the larvae during the dry season. And secondly, by sharing maps of these precise targets with local public health authorities — via a mobile phone app — to guide their larvae-eradication efforts in the most efficient and effective manner. 

The strategy is based on research on the ecology of stephensi in Jigjiga led by Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, Emory professor of environmental sciences and co-principal investigator for the grant. “It sounds counterintuitive to focus mosquito-control efforts on the dry season,” Vazquez-Prokopec says. “Our research, however, shows that the dry season offers a perfect window of opportunity to cost-effectively control these mosquitoes.” 

Vazquez-Prokopec is an expert on the disease ecology of pathogens spread by vectors, such as mosquitoes. His research considers environmental factors as well as the interactions of mosquitoes, the pathogens they carry, and people. 

Read the full story here.

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