Previous studies have shown that some of these cells have very regular peaks of activity, approximately every 30cm, like a neural pedometer. Results showed that humans can also accurately judge distance and that the same environmental manipulation that distorts the pedometer in rats also makes humans worse at the task. This means that the distance estimation task that relies on the neural pedometer might be a useful tool for early diagnosis. Professor James Ainge who led the study, said, "It is very exciting to link the ability to estimate distance with this regular pattern of activity in the entorhinal cortex. The fact that humans and rats show the same type of errors in distance estimation in different environments gives us confidence that the brain mechanisms are the same in both species."