[Verse 1] Six thin layers stacked like a deck that got dealt, Medial side reads the map, lateral reads what you smelt, Layer two is stellate — that means star-shaped and bright, Little starburst neurons wired for the grid-cell light, Layer three sends pyramids marching to the sea, Border zone, that's where cortex kisses hippocampus, see, Ribbon of the rhinal sulcus drawing the line, Anatomy ain't boring when the layers align [Chorus] M-E-C for "map," L-E-C for "what's near," Layer two's the stellate hub, remember it here, Perforant path is the bridge, don't you forget the name, Grid cells tessellate — that's tiling without a seam or a frame [Verse 2] Circuit rolls out like a river through the deep, Perforant path drops straight to the dentate's steep, Dentate hands to CA3, CA3 to CA1's door, Subiculum loops it back — that's the feedback, once more, It's a trisynaptic engine, three hops in the chain, Entorhinal's the gateway, both exit and the lane, Superficial layers ship it, deep layers receive, A closed loop of memory that never takes leave [Verse 3] Now the inputs — where the signal first gets born, Postrhinal cortex feeds the MEC with the scenery, torn From landmarks and borders, distance, angle, and place, While perirhinal whispers objects to the lateral space, "Where am I" versus "what is this" — two rivers, one delta, They braid in entorhinal before the hippocampal shelter, Presubiculum chips in heading, like a compass thrown, Every input's a puzzle piece the cortex has grown [Chorus] M-E-C for "map," L-E-C for "what's near," Layer two's the stellate hub, remember it here, Perforant path is the bridge, don't you forget the name, Grid cells tessellate — that's tiling without a seam or a frame [Verse 4] Now the crown jewel — Moser found the honeycomb inside, Hexagons repeating every time the rat's outside, Not one field but a lattice, spaced with mathematic grace, Scale grows dorsal to ventral, wider modules interlace, Path integration's the engine, stepping, counting, blind, Building maps from motion when no landmark's there to find, Six-fold symmetry's the signature, geometry so neat, The brain's own graph paper laid beneath your feet [Bridge] Layers hold the neurons, circuits hold the flow, Inputs bring the meaning, grids tell you where to go, Stack it, loop it, feed it, tile it — watch the whole thing bloom, Six layers, one gateway, tessellating room [Chorus] M-E-C for "map," L-E-C for "what's near," Layer two's the stellate hub, remember it here, Perforant path is the bridge, don't you forget the name, Grid cells tessellate — that's tiling without a seam or a frame [Outro] Star cells, grid cells, hexagons in a row, Entorhinal cortex — now you know how to go
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