week 11: navigation Flashcards
what is navigation
the behaviour used to find your way
types of navigation analysis
microscopic analysis
macroscopic analysis
how do you keep track of your own location and object locations as you move
small scale space
short time scale
perception
how do you use that memory to guide navigation
large scale space
long time scale
learning and memory
what is microscopic analysis: neural mechanisms of location tracking
how you move within a small scale space in a short time period
what part of the brain is involved in neural mechanisms of location tracking
the medial temporal lobe
components of the medial temporal lobe
perirhinal cortex
entorhinal cortex
hippocampus
parahippocampal cortex
what are the neurons in the medial temporal lobe
place cells
what do place cells do
place cells in the hippocampus fire when you are in specific locations within a given environment
what are place cells good at doing
they can tell you where you are
whats an issue with place cells
they can only tell you where you are at that particular moment
what can place cells alone not tell you
how you got there
what type of cell does trajectory tracking
grid cells
where are grid cells located
in the entorhinal cortex
what do grid cells do
fire when you occupy one of hexagonal grid points within a given environment
what does every grid cell have
multiple hot spots
other types of cells that have been discovered for neural mechanism of location tracking
head direction cells
spatial view cells
boundary cells
what do head direction cells do
indicating what direction your head is pointing to
what do spatial view cells do
tell you which way your eyes are pointing
what constitutes the neural basis of spatial navigation
place cells
grid cells
and other types of cells such as:
head direction cells
spatial view cells
boundary cells
what does early evidence suggest regarding location tracking in the human brain
that the systems of location tracking are shared across species (most studies are done on animals but should still apply to humans)
how far is our spatial updating behaviour good for
roughly up to 20 metres
how do we come to achieve such excellent spatial updating behaviour
we learn through moving through the space
mental imagery and top down control
observing others walking/moving (imitation)
what did the Klatzky et all experiment for spatial updating behaviour look at (triangle completion task)
actual walking
simulated walking (no body movement)
simulated walking with physical turning
watching someone walking
listening to the description of the path
what happened in the Klatzky et al experiment
only 2 out of the 5 participants managed to do the task. The other 3 participants weren’t even close
what conditions were effective in the klatzky experiment
when the participants physically walked
simulated walking with physical turning
what is critical for us to track our location and direction
physical movement
what was a conclusion from the kaltzky study
when it comes to human location tracking, info from the human body is severely important
whats an example of passive navigation
being pushed in a wheel chair
what type of controlled walking enhanced spatial updating
active more than passive
what is the conclusion for spatial updating behaviour studies
when you control your body movement more actively you are gaining higher quality information about your location
if a patient has damage to their medial temporal lobe what happens
their spatial updating behaviour gets worse
what side of the medial temporal lobe, when damaged is associated with higher errors in spatial updating behaviour
the right side of the temporal lobe (though both are bad the right is worse)
what happens to epilepsy patients who surgically removed their MTL (typically only one hemisphere)
they tend to walk too far eg. farther than the controls
what study looked at large scale navigation
Ishikawa et al study
what was the Ishikawa study
participants learned the layout of a residential neighbourhood by walking prescribed paths in 3 different ways
what were the 3 different ways participants walked around the neighbourhood in the Ishikawa study
finding the paths by reading a paper map
using a GPS
being guided along the paths first, and subsequently following remembered paths by themselves
what did the Ishikawa study find
that GPS users performed less well than those with maps and using memory
how did the GPS users perform less well in the Ishikawa study
they walked longer distance and made more stops
their memory for the neighbourhood layout was less accurate
what issues was seen with the gps users
depth processing issue and therefore memory issue
what are the 2 systems of large scale navigation
place learning
response learning
what is place learning
identify object locations within a larger environmental framework
how is knowledge acquired for place learning
rapidly acquired
what does place learning allow
flexible behaviour eg. short cutting
what does place learning require
requires conscious retrieval
what is place learning navigation susceptible to
forgetting
what type of memory is place learning navigation
declarative memory based
what type of system is place learning dependent on
medial temporal lobe
what is response learning
perform a specific sequence of action
how is response learning navigation learnt
slowly
what type of behaviour is only possible from response learning navigation
rigid behvaiour
what does response learning navigation not require
conscious awareness
how long does reponse learning navigation last
much longer lasting than place learning
what type of memory does reponse learning navigation use
procedural memory based
what system is used for response learning navigation
caudate dependent system
how is geographical information represented for memory
in a hierarchical structure
judgements about spatial relations are:
biased by higher-order information (eg. which state a city belongs to)
how does memory for geographical information tend to be biased
it is not like a real map at all
these biases affect how people navigate by using their memories for places and locations
