McLaren-Gradinaru Michael, Burles Ford, Dhillon Inderpreet, Leonidas David Adam, Umiltà Alberto, Hannah Jaimy, Dolhan Kira, Iaria Giuseppe
NeuroLab, Department of Psychology, Hotchkiss Brain Institute, and Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2020 Jan 24;14:5. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.00005. eCollection 2020.
The ability to form a mental representation of the surroundings is a critical skill for spatial navigation and orientation in humans. Such a mental representation is known as a "cognitive map" and is formed as individuals familiarize themselves with the surrounding, providing detailed information about salient environmental landmarks and their spatial relationships. Despite evidence of the malleability and potential for training spatial orientation skills in humans, it remains unknown if the specific ability to form cognitive maps can be improved by an appositely developed training program. Here, we present a newly developed computerized 12-days training program in a virtual environment designed specifically to stimulate the acquisition of this important skill. We asked 15 healthy volunteers to complete the training program and perform a comprehensive spatial behavioral assessment before and after the training. We asked participants to become familiar with the environment by navigating a small area before slowly building them up to navigate within the larger and more complex environment; we asked them to travel back and forth between environmental landmarks until they had built an understanding of where those landmarks resided with respect to one another. This process repeated until participants had visited every landmark in the virtual town and had learned where each landmark resided with respect to the others. The results of this study confirmed the feasibility of the training program and suggested an improvement in the ability of participants to form mental representations of the spatial surrounding. This study provides preliminary findings on the feasibility of a 12-days program in training spatial orientation skills. We discuss the utility and potential impact of this training program in the lives of the many individuals affected by topographical disorientation as a result of an acquired or developmental condition.
形成周围环境心理表征的能力是人类空间导航和定向的一项关键技能。这种心理表征被称为“认知地图”，它是在个体熟悉周围环境的过程中形成的，能提供有关显著环境地标及其空间关系的详细信息。尽管有证据表明人类的空间定向技能具有可塑性且有训练的潜力，但通过适当开发的训练计划能否提高形成认知地图的特定能力仍不明确。在此，我们展示了一个新开发的为期12天的计算机化虚拟环境训练计划，该计划专门设计用于刺激这项重要技能的习得。我们让15名健康志愿者完成训练计划，并在训练前后进行全面的空间行为评估。我们先让参与者通过在一个小区域内导航来熟悉环境，然后逐渐引导他们在更大、更复杂的环境中导航；我们要求他们在环境地标之间来回穿梭，直到他们明白这些地标彼此之间的位置关系。这个过程不断重复，直到参与者访问了虚拟城镇中的每一个地标，并了解了每个地标相对于其他地标的位置。这项研究的结果证实了该训练计划的可行性，并表明参与者形成空间周围环境心理表征的能力有所提高。这项研究提供了关于一个为期12天的训练空间定向技能计划可行性的初步发现。我们讨论了这个训练计划对许多因后天或发育状况而受到地形定向障碍影响的个体生活的效用和潜在影响。
