[Verse 1] Steffenach two-thousand-five cut the lights out cold, Morris water maze, no beacon, no handhold, Rat's swimming blind, trusting only inner grid, Medial entorhinal lesioned — watch the plan get skid, Path integration failing, circles wide and lost, Dead reckoning broken, self-motion paying the cost, That's the pathway reading every twist of your stride, Grid cells clocking distance like a hexagonal guide. [Chorus] MEC maps the miles, LEC marks the thing, Grid cell compass versus what the object bring, Water maze in darkness tests the path you keep, Object-in-context wakes the lateral from sleep, Medial for the metric, lateral for the mark, Two cortices splitting up the mental chart. [Verse 2] Send the rodent foraging, watch it hunt for grain, Homing vector plotted through the tunnel and the rain, Food-carrying task tracks the beeline to the nest, No visual cue needed — self-motion does the rest, Path integration engine, medial circuit's pride, Strip the landmarks bare and the grid cells still decide, That's why darkness matters, that's why cues get pulled, Testing raw path integration, allocentric, unspooled. [Chorus] MEC maps the miles, LEC marks the thing, Grid cell compass versus what the object bring, Water maze in darkness tests the path you keep, Object-in-context wakes the lateral from sleep, Medial for the metric, lateral for the mark, Two cortices splitting up the mental chart. [Verse 3] Now flip the coin to lateral, entorhinal's other lobe, Wilson twenty-thirteen dressed the object in a robe, Object-in-context: same toy, different room, Lateral cortex fires when the setting shifts the tune, Object-place recognition — where'd that widget go, Hippocampus needs that lateral input flowing slow, Lesion the LEC and the novelty falls flat, Rat forgets the "what," though it still recalls the "that." [Verse 4] Eight arms spinning like a clock with sugar at the tips, Radial arm maze tests the working memory chip, Which arm's been visited, spatial ledger in the mind, Medial entorhinal grid keeps the tally aligned, T-maze alternation, left then right then left again, Spatial working memory tested in that binary den, Hippocampal-entorhinal loop has to stay in sync, Break the circuit and the alternating pattern starts to shrink. [Bridge] So match it, scholar: spatial map or object trace, Grid or place or texture — pin it to the space, MEC for the metric, LEC for the label, Sort the tasks like cards laid flat on the table, Darkness strips the visual, keeps the vector true, Swap the context, watch which memory falls through, Two cortices whispering through the hippocampal gate, Learn the split and the whole circuit integrates. [Outro] Water maze in shadow, food run for the den, Object dressed in context, T-maze back again, Medial for the miles, lateral for the mark, Entorhinal cortex, mapping every spark.
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