Neural correlates of real-world route learning

• Published in: NeuroImage (Orlando, Fla.) Vol. 53; no. 2; pp. 725 - 735
• Main Authors: Schinazi, Victor R., Epstein, Russell A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.11.2010; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Adult; Brain - physiology; Brain mapping; Buildings; Cognitive models; Colleges & universities; Decision Making - physiology; Discrimination (Psychology) - physiology; Experiments; Female; Hippocampus - physiology; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Landmark; Learning - physiology; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Navigation; Occipital Lobe - physiology; Orientation - physiology; Parahippocampal cortex; Parahippocampal Gyrus - physiology; Parietal Lobe - physiology; Psychomotor Performance - physiology; Reaction Time - physiology; Recognition (Psychology) - physiology; Retrosplenial cortex; Route learning; Space Perception - physiology; Spatial Behavior - physiology; Young Adult; Route learning; Retrosplenial cortex; Navigation; Parahippocampal cortex; Landmark
• ISSN: 1053-8119; 1095-9572; 1095-9572
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.06.065

Classical theories of spatial microgenesis (Siegel and White, 1975) posit that information about landmarks and the paths between them is acquired prior to the establishment of more holistic survey-level representations. To test this idea, we examined the neural and behavioral correlates of landmark and path encoding during a real-world route learning episode. Subjects were taught a novel 3 km route around the University of Pennsylvania campus and then brought to the laboratory where they performed a recognition task that required them to discriminate between on-route and off-route buildings. Each building was preceded by a masked prime, which could either be the building that immediately preceded the target building along the route or immediately succeeded it. Consistent with previous reports using a similar paradigm in a virtual environment (Janzen and Weststeijn, 2007), buildings at navigational decision points (DPs) were more easily recognized than non-DP buildings and recognition was facilitated by in-route vs. against-route primes. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data collected during the recognition task revealed two effects of interest: first, greater response to DP vs. non-DP buildings in a wide network of brain regions previously implicated in spatial processing; second, a significant interaction between building location (DP vs. non-DP) and route direction (in-route vs. against-route) in a retrosplenial/parietal-occipital sulcus region previously labeled the retrosplenial complex (RSC). These results indicate that newly learned real-world routes are coded in terms of paths between decision points and suggest that the RSC may be a critical locus for integrating landmark and path information. ►Real-world routes are encoded in terms of paths between decision points (DPs) ►Buildings at decision points are better remembered than non-DP buildings ►Several brain regions respond more strongly to DP than to non-DP buildings ►Retrosplenial complex encodes direction of travel at decision points