Local spatial navigation or "steering" in patients with vestibular loss in a virtual reality environment.

Background: Patients with vestibular loss have reduced wayfinding ability, but the association between vestibular loss and impaired steering spatial navigation is unclear.

Objective: To evaluate whether vestibular loss is associated with reduced steering navigation performance in a virtual reality (VR) environment containing obstacles.

Methods: 17 ambulatory adults with vestibular loss were age/sex-matched to healthy controls.

Statistically Optimal Cue Integration During Human Spatial Navigation.

In 2007, Cheng and colleagues published their influential review wherein they analyzed the literature on spatial cue interaction during navigation through a Bayesian lens, and concluded that models of optimal cue integration often applied in psychophysical studies could explain cue interaction during navigation. Since then, numerous empirical investigations have been conducted to assess the degree to which human navigators are optimal when integrating multiple spatial cues during a variety of navigation-related tasks. In the current review, we discuss the literature on human cue integration during navigation that has been published since Cheng et al.

The influence of environmental geometry and spatial symmetry on spatial updating during locomotion.

Spatial updating based on self-motion cues is important to navigation in the absence of familiar landmarks. Previous studies showed that spatial updating without vision was automatic. The goal of the current study was to investigate whether ambiguous orientations indicated by visual cues affect spatial updating based on self-motion.

Bayesian decision theory and navigation.

Spatial navigation is a complex cognitive activity that depends on perception, action, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving. Effective navigation depends on the ability to combine information from multiple spatial cues to estimate one's position and the locations of goals. Spatial cues include landmarks, and other visible features of the environment, and body-based cues generated by self-motion (vestibular, proprioceptive, and efferent information).

Performance in Real World- and Virtual Reality-Based Spatial Navigation Tasks in Patients With Vestibular Dysfunction.

Objective: This study evaluated whether vestibular dysfunction is associated with reduced spatial navigation performance.

Study Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Otolaryngology Clinic in the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center and an analogous virtual reality (VR) environment.

Integration of visual landmark cues in spatial memory.

Over the past two decades, much research has been conducted to investigate whether humans are optimal when integrating sensory cues during spatial memory and navigational tasks. Although this work has consistently demonstrated optimal integration of visual cues (e.g.

A computational cognitive model of judgments of relative direction.

In the past several decades, considerable theoretical progress has been made in understanding the role of reference frames in the encoding and retrieval of spatial information about the environment. Many of these insights have come from participants making judgments of relative direction using their memories of spatial layouts. In this task, participants are asked to imagine standing at a given location and facing a certain direction, and to point to a target location.

Mental representations of recently learned nested environments.

Two experiments investigated the mental representations of objects' location in a virtual nested environment. In Experiment 1, participants learned the locations of objects (buildings or related accessories) in an exterior environment and then learned the locations of objects inside one of the centrally located buildings (interior environment). Participants completed judgments of relative direction in which the imagined heading was established by pairs of objects from the interior environment and the target was one of the objects in the exterior environment.

A comparison of methods of assessing cue combination during navigation.

Mobile organisms make use of spatial cues to navigate effectively in the world, such as visual and self-motion cues. Over the past decade, researchers have investigated how human navigators combine spatial cues, and whether cue combination is optimal according to statistical principles, by varying the number of cues available in homing tasks. The methodological approaches employed by researchers have varied, however.

Manipulating the visibility of barriers to improve spatial navigation efficiency and cognitive mapping.

Previous studies from psychology, neuroscience and geography showed that environmental barriers fragment the representation of the environment, reduce spatial navigation efficiency, distort distance estimation and make spatial updating difficult. Despite these negative effects, limited research has examined how to overcome barriers and if individual differences mediate their causes and potential interventions. We hypothesize that the reduced visibility caused by barriers plays a major role in accumulating error in spatial updating and encoding spatial relationships.

Acquisition and transfer of spatial knowledge during wayfinding.

In the current study, we investigated the ways in which the acquisition and transfer of spatial knowledge were affected by (a) the type of spatial relations predominately experienced during learning (routes determined by walkways vs. straight-line paths between locations); (b) environmental complexity; and (c) the availability of rotational body-based information. Participants learned the layout of a virtual shopping mall by repeatedly searching for target storefronts located in 1 of the buildings.

Virtual Orientation Overrides Physical Orientation to Define a Reference Frame in Spatial Updating.

Previous studies showed that people could use either an egocentric or allocentric reference frame in spatial updating with body-based cues (i.e., physical body movements), but the adopted reference frame was anchored by the physical egocentric front when body-based cues were constrained.

Optimal combination of environmental cues and path integration during navigation.

Navigation is influenced by body-based self-motion cues that are integrated over time, in a process known as path integration, as well as by environmental cues such as landmarks and room shape. In two experiments we explored whether humans combine path integration and environmental cues (Exp. 1: room shape; Exp.

Where you are affects what you can easily imagine: Environmental geometry elicits sensorimotor interference in remote perspective taking.

Imagined perspective switches are notoriously difficult, a fact often ascribed to sensorimotor interference between one's to-be-imagined versus actual orientation. Here, we demonstrate similar interference effects, even if participants know they are in a remote environment with unknown spatial relation to the learning environment. Participants learned 15 target objects irregularly arranged in an office from one orientation (0°, 120°, or 240°).

Reference frames in spatial updating when body-based cues are absent.

The current study investigated the reference frame used in spatial updating when idiothetic cues to self-motion were minimized (desktop virtual reality). In Experiment 1, participants learned a layout of eight objects from a single perspective (learning heading) in a virtual environment. After learning, they were placed in the same virtual environment and used a keyboard to navigate to two of the learned objects (visible) before pointing to a third object (invisible).

Spatial Updating Strategy Affects the Reference Frame in Path Integration.

This study investigated how spatial updating strategies affected the selection of reference frames in path integration. Participants walked an outbound path consisting of three successive waypoints in a featureless environment and then pointed to the first waypoint. We manipulated the alignment of participants' final heading at the end of the outbound path with their initial heading to examine the adopted reference frame.

Cue combination in human spatial navigation.

This project investigated the ways in which visual cues and bodily cues from self-motion are combined in spatial navigation. Participants completed a homing task in an immersive virtual environment. In Experiments 1A and 1B, the reliability of visual cues and self-motion cues was manipulated independently and within-participants.

More than a cool illusion? Functional significance of self-motion illusion (circular vection) for perspective switches.

Self-motion can facilitate perspective switches and "automatic spatial updating" and help reduce disorientation in applications like virtual reality (VR). However, providing physical motion through moving-base motion simulators or free-space walking areas comes with high cost and technical complexity. This study provides first evidence that merely experiencing an embodied illusion of self-motion ("circular vection") can provide similar behavioral benefits as actual self-motion: Blindfolded participants were asked to imagine facing new perspectives in a well-learned room, and point to previously learned objects.

Age and gender differences in spatial perspective taking.

Background And Aims: It is often necessary in daily experience to change one's point of view to adopt mentally the spatial perspective of other persons, learn the position of different objects in a new environment or even describe an environment to other persons. Hence, the ability to link spatial information from different perspectives seems to be necessary to orient ourselves in the space. Several studies have found gender-related differences in spatial reasoning in younger adults, but little is known about such effects in middle-aged and older adults.

Bias in Human Path Integration Is Predicted by Properties of Grid Cells.

Accurate wayfinding is essential to the survival of many animal species and requires the ability to maintain spatial orientation during locomotion. One of the ways that humans and other animals stay spatially oriented is through path integration, which operates by integrating self-motion cues over time, providing information about total displacement from a starting point. The neural substrate of path integration in mammals may exist in grid cells, which are found in dorsomedial entorhinal cortex and presubiculum and parasubiculum in rats.

Connecting spatial memories of two nested spaces.

Four experiments investigated the manner in which people use spatial reference directions to organize spatial memories of 2 conceptually nested layouts. Participants learned directions of 8 remote cities centered to Beijing or Edmonton, where the experiments occurred, using a map or using direct pointing. The map and the environment were aligned, and participants faced north (0°).

Global frames of reference organize configural knowledge of paths.

Five experiments examined the organization of spatial memory of an irregular path learned by walking with vision. Two hypotheses were tested: (a) that participants would establish a single global frame of reference to organize the spatial memory of the path; or alternatively (b) that participants would establish path-aligned reference directions at each path leg but not establish a global frame of reference. Participants donned a head-mounted display and were asked to navigate through a virtual six-segment path with each turning point indicated by a virtual object.

Representations of interobject spatial relations in long-term memory.

A growing body of evidence has indicated that human spatial memory is organized in terms of a small number of reference directions and that interobject spatial relations are represented in terms of these directions (e.g., McNamara, 2003).

Retrieving enduring spatial representations after disorientation.

Four experiments tested whether there are enduring spatial representations of objects' locations in memory. Previous studies have shown that under certain conditions the internal consistency of pointing to objects using memory is disrupted by disorientation. This disorientation effect has been attributed to an absence of or to imprecise enduring spatial representations of objects' locations.

The organization of room geometry and object layout geometry in human memory.

Research with humans and with nonhuman species has suggested a special role of room geometry in spatial memory functioning. In two experiments, participants learned the configuration of a room with four corners, along with the configuration of four objects within the room, while standing in a fixed position at the room's periphery. The configurations were either rectangular (Experiment 1) or irregular (Experiment 2).