Kavli Institute for Systems Neurocience, Centre for Neural Computation, The Egil and Pauline Braathen and Fred Kavli Centre for Cortical Microcircuits, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2021 Mar 10;11(1):5612. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-84599-7.
Advances in virtual reality (VR) technology have greatly benefited spatial navigation research. By presenting space in a controlled manner, changing aspects of the environment one at a time or manipulating the gain from different sensory inputs, the mechanisms underlying spatial behaviour can be investigated. In parallel, a growing body of evidence suggests that the processes involved in spatial navigation extend to non-spatial domains. Here, we leverage VR technology advances to test whether participants can navigate abstract knowledge. We designed a two-dimensional quantity space-presented using a head-mounted display-to test if participants can navigate abstract knowledge using a first-person perspective navigation paradigm. To investigate the effect of physical movement, we divided participants into two groups: one walking and rotating on a motion platform, the other group using a gamepad to move through the abstract space. We found that both groups learned to navigate using a first-person perspective and formed accurate representations of the abstract space. Interestingly, navigation in the quantity space resembled behavioural patterns observed in navigation studies using environments with natural visuospatial cues. Notably, both groups demonstrated similar patterns of learning. Taken together, these results imply that both self-movement and remote exploration can be used to learn the relational mapping between abstract stimuli.
虚拟现实 (VR) 技术的进步极大地促进了空间导航研究。通过以受控的方式呈现空间，一次改变环境的一个方面或操纵来自不同感觉输入的增益，可以研究空间行为的机制。与此同时，越来越多的证据表明，参与空间导航的过程扩展到非空间领域。在这里，我们利用 VR 技术的进步来测试参与者是否可以导航抽象知识。我们设计了一个二维数量空间-使用头戴式显示器呈现-以测试参与者是否可以使用第一人称视角导航范式来导航抽象知识。为了研究物理运动的影响，我们将参与者分为两组：一组在运动平台上行走和旋转，另一组使用游戏手柄在抽象空间中移动。我们发现，两组参与者都学会了使用第一人称视角进行导航，并形成了对抽象空间的准确表示。有趣的是，数量空间中的导航类似于使用具有自然视空间线索的环境进行导航研究中观察到的行为模式。值得注意的是，两组参与者都表现出类似的学习模式。总之，这些结果表明，自我运动和远程探索都可以用于学习抽象刺激之间的关系映射。
