Spatial orientation and memory are key functions that help us to operate in a complex world. A European research consortium will retrace the evolutionary history of these cognitive skills and show how individuals adapt their navigational strategies to circumstance. A more in-depth understanding of how humans make sense of space will provide invaluable information for environmental planning and design, and lead to improved solutions for people with impaired spatial abilities.
 Finding your way home, remembering where you left the car keys or directing someone to the nearest hospital are examples of highly complex cognitive tasks based on spatial memory and orientation. Without these functions, navigating through daily life would be impossible. Our ability to construct spatial representations of the outside world, and to store them in our memory is likely to underlie many other higher cognitive functions in humans, such as decision-making and planning. Many other animals possess the ability to navigate around their environment but there are certain higher-order features of the human system, such as the ability to communicate spatial information verbally, which are uniquely human. The Wayfinding project will contribute to the NEST PATHFINDER initiative to investigate what it means to be human, by exploring the particularities of the cognitive organisation of spatial memory and orientation in humans from an evolutionary perspective. This European consortium, bringing together six laboratories working in psychology, physiology, biology, neuroscience, anthropology and artificial intelligence, aims to map differences in spatial ability both between humans and other species, and within human populations. Taking a perspective
How we perceive and remember the locations of objects is multi-faceted and depends on circumstances. In their most advanced, abstract form, our spatial representations help us to create mental images of what other eyes might see from a different perspective. But it is likely that the human cognitive system has also preserved the evolutionary history of spatial abilities and may at times rely on much simpler navigational mechanisms.
The Wayfinding project will explore these different mechanisms and attempt to map their evolutionary hierarchy and neural basis, using a combination of experimental cognitive tests and neuro-imaging techniques in rats, monkeys and humans. Once their place in the hierarchy is confirmed, the project will concentrate on those mechanisms considered uniquely human, such as perspective taking.
Intriguing evidence suggests that humans can shift from one navigational strategy to another according to requirements. Comparing the ways healthy volunteers handle spatial tasks with those suffering from visual or selective neurological impairments will provide researchers with a fascinating insight into which parts of the brain process the different navigational mechanisms and whether an impairment affecting one mechanism triggers a shift to an alternative strategy. The use of functional neuro-imaging techniques will help to pinpoint the neural circuitry activated by verbal and visual inputs during the different tasks.
To complete their overview of how spatial memory and orientation have evolved in humans, the consortium members will study the influence of gender, age and culture on performance in certain spatially related tasks.
Towards design for navigation This project will make a significant scientific contribution to the quest to understand how different elements of the human cognitive system are organised and function together.
A better understanding of how the human navigational system works has important social and practical implications, too. Elementary educational programmes will be one area to benefit from a greater insight into the development of children's visual and spatial abilities. Likewise, the project outcomes should help to find solutions for those confronted with problems in spatial orientation - the elderly, the visually impaired, and patients suffering from brain damage or Alzheimer's disease - to cope better with everyday life.
Future technical applications will include artificial navigation systems and virtual reality tools calibrated to take into account variations in human performance. On a broader scale, the consortium hopes that the project will also yield invaluable knowledge for city planners, architects and designers, making it easier for us to find our way through space, whether in the corridors of a new building or in the virtual labyrinth of a computer interface.
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