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Researchers have gained a first insight into how the brain structures higher-level information. By extracting and analysing data from a neural network of grid cells, they found that the collective neural activity is shaped like the surface of a doughnut. The study, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and collaborators, is published in Nature, High-level brain functions result from the orchestration of activity between many thousands of neurons in neural networks. For grid cells, these neural network conversations result in our understanding of location, our capacity to navigate, and our mental maps. "This discovery provides one of the first insights into how brain cells operate collectively, as a society. It provides an unprecedented glimpse into how large networks of neurons produce properties that cannot be inferred from the activities of single cells. These collective codes are the clue to all high-level cognitive functions of the brain," said Edvard Moser, a professor of neuroscience and co-director of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's(NTNU)Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience.