Study reveals how our brains track where we and others go As COVID cases rise, physically distancing yourself from other people has never been more important. Now a new UCLA study reveals how your brain navigates places and monitors someone else in the same location. Published Dec. 23 in Nature, the findings suggest that our brains generate a common code to mark where other people are in relation to ourselves. "We studied how our brain reacts when we navigate a physical space - first alone and then with others," said senior author Nanthia Suthana, the Ruth and Raymond Stotter Chair in Neurosurgery and an assistant professor of neurosurgery and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.