Spatial Recognition Flashcards
Why is spatial recognition important
> For navigating through a place
For navigating to interact/prevent an event
Prediction and planning of the future
Name the cells that are responsible for spatial navigation
Place cells (hippocampus)(O’Keefe)
> fires action potentials when the person walks by a point in the space
Grid cells (Medial entorhinal cortex)
(i.e., Medial entorhinal cortex in MT (responsible for motion) = makes sense
Grid cells = fire action potentials when the person walks by point in the space. However, they fire across more space and in a grid-like formation
Head direction cells
Cells that fire according to the direction that the person is facing
Border cells
Cells that fire when the person is near to the border
Explain Parahippocampal Place Area and what it is sensitive to
coined by Nancy Kanwisher
adjacent to the hippocampus and the collateral sulcus
for recognising space and scenes
sensitive to backgrounds/entire scene rather than just the objects
sensitive to realistic scenes
What are the areas that are responsible for scene recognition
Parahippocampal Place Area = responsible for the outline of the scene
Lateral Occipital Cortex and the Fulsiform Area for the recognition of the details in the scene
What are the findings of the Pennsylvania University Experiment
- The degree of Hippocampus activation is correlated with the distance between the landmarks
- The Hippocampus is not used in identifying what the landmark is (PPA, Retrosplenial Cortex, early visual and LOC are)
What is the finding of the viewpoint experiment
the heading direction cells will inhibit when facing the same direction for too long
What does the retrosplenial complex do
for allocentric heading, navigation tasks and passively viewing navigational stimuli
Explain what findings do the London Walking experiment provide
posterior hippocampus = pathway navigation
anterior hippocampus = euclidean navigation
Explain the London Taxi Drivers and Bus Drivers Experiment
Taxi drivers have a higher posterior hippocampus volume and anterior hippocampus
larger posterior hippocampus volume, but smaller anterior hippocampus volume (i.e., grey matter) than bus drivers
Taxi drivers are also better at identifying London landmarks, and making judgements of the distance of the landmarks. However, bus drivers are better at recalling newly-learnt visual information
what does the delivery experiment show
place-responsive cells are mostly clustered in the hippocampus
