Environment Schema-Like Influences in Spatial Navigation: An fMRI Study
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Author(s)
Maxim, Paulina
Advisor(s)
Brown, Thackery I.
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Abstract
Studies on spatial schemas have primarily come from rodent studies examining the development of task representations in the animal’s brain. Such studies provide support for accelerated learning of novel spatial associations when prior associations already exist, and notably, there seems to be rapid disengagement of the hippocampus when encoding new experiences within an existing cognitive map. Research has set out to test whether existing spatial knowledge can also benefit novel learning in humans, and if there are similar neural characteristics during prospective planning and recall of memories related to existing spatial knowledge. The present study tested healthy young adult participants across two days in a virtual navigation task and used fMRI to examine complementary views of how the medial temporal lobe and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) contribute to route planning and navigation. Univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses revealed: 1) Functional differences in subdivisions of the mPFC, sometimes agreeing, but other times responding differently across various stages of navigation (e.g., planning vs. goal arrival), and differing in how they explain individual differences in navigation behavior. 2) Broad agreement between when and how the hippocampus (right hemisphere in particular) and mPFC (posterior-ventral mPFC in particular) are engaged for task stages, represent environments, and track participant differences – a finding which aligns well with their anatomical interconnections, but may contradict the competitive view from models of schema memory.
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2023-08-01
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