Emotional Renovations

Home is more than a place on a map. It evokes a particular set of feelings, and a sense of safety and belonging. Location, memories, and emotions are intertwined within those walls. Over the past few decades, this sentiment has gained solid scientific grounding. And earlier this year, researchers identified some of the cells that help encode our multifaceted homes in the human brain.

In the early 1970s, neuroscientist John O’Keefe of University College London and his colleagues began to uncover the brain mechanisms responsible for navigating space. They monitored the electrical activity of neurons within a part of the brain called the hippocampus. As the animals moved around an enclosure with electrodes implanted in their hippocampus, specific neurons fired in response to particular locations. These neurons, which came to be known as place cells, each had a unique “place field” where it