Hegarty Mary, He Chuanxiuyue, Boone Alexander P, Yu Shuying, Jacobs Emily G, Chrastil Elizabeth R
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of California.
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California.
Top Cogn Sci. 2023 Jan;15(1):102-119. doi: 10.1111/tops.12592. Epub 2022 Jan 1.
Navigating to goal locations in a known environment (wayfinding) can be accomplished by different strategies, notably by taking habitual, well-learned routes (response strategy) or by inferring novel paths, such as shortcuts, from spatial knowledge of the environment's layout (place strategy). Human and animal neuroscience studies reveal that these strategies reflect different brain systems, with response strategies relying more on activation of the striatum and place strategies associated with activation of the hippocampus. In addition to individual differences in strategy, recent behavioral studies show sex differences such that men use place strategies more than women, and age differences such that older adults use more response strategies than younger adults. This paper takes a comprehensive multilevel approach to understanding these differences, characterizing wayfinding as a complex information processing task. This analysis reveals factors that affect navigation strategy, including availability of the relevant type of environmental knowledge, momentary access to this knowledge, trade-offs between physical and mental effort in different navigation contexts, and risk taking. We consider how strategies are influenced by the computational demands of a navigation task and by factors that affect the neural circuits underlying navigation. We also discuss limitations of laboratory studies to date and outline priorities for future research, including relating wayfinding strategies to independent measures of spatial knowledge, and studying wayfinding strategies in naturalistic environments.
在已知环境中导航到目标位置（寻路）可以通过不同的策略来实现，特别是通过采取习惯性的、熟知的路线（反应策略），或者从对环境布局的空间知识中推断出新的路径，比如捷径（位置策略）。人类和动物神经科学研究表明，这些策略反映了不同的脑系统，反应策略更多地依赖于纹状体的激活，而位置策略则与海马体的激活相关。除了策略上的个体差异，最近的行为研究还显示了性别差异，即男性比女性更多地使用位置策略，以及年龄差异，即老年人比年轻人更多地使用反应策略。本文采用了一种全面的多层次方法来理解这些差异，将寻路描述为一项复杂的信息处理任务。这一分析揭示了影响导航策略的因素，包括相关类型环境知识的可用性、对该知识的即时获取、不同导航情境中体力和脑力的权衡，以及冒险行为。我们考虑策略是如何受到导航任务的计算需求以及影响导航背后神经回路的因素的影响。我们还讨论了迄今为止实验室研究的局限性，并概述了未来研究的重点，包括将寻路策略与空间知识的独立测量联系起来，以及在自然环境中研究寻路策略。
