Human ability to mentally navigate could facilitate teleportation

NPR : Although teleportation is still the stuff of science fiction, if humans were able to develop the technology, would their brains be able to handle the sudden leaps in location? Arne Ekstrom of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues set out to answer that question by studying the low-frequency electrical oscillations of the brain’s hippocampus associated with navigation. Several epileptic patients with wires placed in their brains for seizure monitoring were asked to play a video game in which they explored a virtual environment by either walking from one location to the next or teleporting. The researchers found that the oscillations continued in both instances, which indicated the existence of a form of mental navigation independent of the physical action of walking or the processing of visual information, such as looking for buildings and street signs.