Abstract
As London taxi drivers acquire “the knowledge” and develop a detailed cognitive map of London, their posterior hippocampi (pHPC) gradually increase in volume, reflecting an increasing pHPC/aHPC volume ratio. In the mnemonic domain, greater pHPC/aHPC volume ratios in young adults have been found to relate to better recollection ability, indicating that the balance between pHPC and aHPC volumes might be reflective of cross‐domain individual differences. Here, we examined participants' self‐reported use of cognitive map‐based navigational strategies in relation to their pHPC/aHPC hippocampal volume ratio. We find that greater reported cognitive map use was related to significantly greater posterior, relative to anterior, hippocampal volume in two separate samples of young adults. Further, greater reported cognitive map usage correlated with better performance on a self‐initiated navigation task. Together, these data help to advance our understanding of differences between aHPC and pHPC and the greater role of pHPC in spatial mapping.
Highlights
We predicted that higher pHPC/aHPC volume ratios should relate to greater reliance on map-based navigational strategies, consistent with predictions based on previous studies and theories of specialization along the hippocampal long-axis (Poppenk et al, 2013; Strange, Witter, Lein, & Moser, 2014)
We calculated the mean volume ratio and correlated it to mapping scores (Figure 2a). These results suggest higher pHPC/aHPC volume ratios relate to higher mapping scores, providing evidence that posterior hippocampal function relates to navigational strategy
In the Toronto dataset, we found no significant relationship between hippocampal volume ratio and navigation efficiency, again supporting the specificity of the link between pHPC/aHPC volume ratios and navigational strategy, but not ability
Summary
We sought to determine, in two independent datasets, if individuals who reported greater use of mental maps (higher mapping scores) had larger pHPC/aHPC volume ratios. We predicted that higher pHPC/aHPC volume ratios should relate to greater reliance on map-based navigational strategies, consistent with predictions based on previous studies and theories of specialization along the hippocampal long-axis (Poppenk et al, 2013; Strange, Witter, Lein, & Moser, 2014).
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