Human brain dynamics in active spatial navigation

Tien-Thong Nguyen Do,Chin-Teng Lin,Klaus Gramann

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-92246-4

Abstract

Spatial navigation is a complex cognitive process based on multiple senses that are integrated and processed by a wide network of brain areas. Previous studies have revealed the retrosplenial complex (RSC) to be modulated in a task-related manner during navigation. However, these studies restricted participants’ movement to stationary setups, which might have impacted heading computations due to the absence of vestibular and proprioceptive inputs. Here, we present evidence of human RSC theta oscillation (4–8 Hz) in an active spatial navigation task where participants actively ambulated from one location to several other points while the position of a landmark and the starting location were updated. The results revealed theta power in the RSC to be pronounced during heading changes but not during translational movements, indicating that physical rotations induce human RSC theta activity. This finding provides a potential evidence of head-direction computation in RSC in healthy humans during active spatial navigation.

Highlights

Spatial navigation is a complex cognitive process based on multiple senses that are integrated and processed by a wide network of brain areas
The landmarkpointing response was used as the dependent variable, number of turns was used as fixed effect, and participant was used as a random effect
Spatial navigation is vital to purposeful movement as it requires a representation of our position and orientation in space as well as our homing trajectories. We explored these processes through a typical stationary navigation task and a physical navigation task where the participants moved through a large virtual space while we recorded and analyzed their brain dynamics using a Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) a pproach[29,30,31,37]

Summary

Introduction

Spatial navigation is a complex cognitive process based on multiple senses that are integrated and processed by a wide network of brain areas. At the end of the trial, after traversing paths that included several turns and straight segments, participants pointed to previously encoded landmark locations (Fig. 1).

Results

Conclusion