Place cells in brain allow for coding spatial position

Researchers began noticing phase precession decades ago among the neurons in rat brains that encode information about spatial position. Human brains and rat brains both contain place cells, each of which is tuned to a specific region or “place field.” Our brains seem to scale these place fields to cover our current surroundings. As you leave one place field and enter another, the firing of the first place cell peters out, while that of the second picks up.