Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, 1503 E. University Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; Department of Psychology & Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, 1503 E. University Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA.
Cortex. 2023 Dec;169:65-80. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2023.09.005. Epub 2023 Sep 30.
Previous research has demonstrated that humans combine multiple sources of spatial information such as self-motion and landmark cues while navigating through an environment. However, it is unclear whether this involves comparing multiple representations obtained from different sources during navigation (parallel hypothesis) or building a representation first based on self-motion cues and then combining with landmarks later (serial hypothesis). We tested these two hypotheses (parallel vs serial) in an active navigation task using wireless mobile scalp EEG recordings. Participants walked through an immersive virtual hallway with or without conflicts between self-motion and landmarks (i.e., intersections) and pointed toward the starting position of the hallway. We employed the oscillatory signals recorded during mobile wireless scalp EEG as a means of identifying when participant representations based on self-motion versus landmark cues might have first emerged. We found that path segments, including intersections present early during navigation, were more strongly associated with later pointing error, regardless of when they appeared during encoding. We also found that there was sufficient information contained within the frontal-midline theta and posterior alpha oscillatory signals in the earliest segments of navigation involving intersections to decode condition (i.e., conflicting vs not conflicting). Together, these findings suggest that intersections play a pivotal role in the early development of spatial representations, suggesting that memory representations for the geometry of walked paths likely develop early during navigation, in support of the parallel hypothesis.
先前的研究表明，人类在导航过程中会结合多种来源的空间信息，如自身运动和地标线索。然而，目前尚不清楚这是否涉及在导航过程中比较来自不同来源的多个表示（并行假设），还是首先基于自身运动线索构建一个表示，然后再与地标线索结合（串行假设）。我们使用无线移动头皮 EEG 记录在主动导航任务中测试了这两种假设（并行与串行）。参与者在带有或不带有自身运动和地标（即交叉口）冲突的沉浸式虚拟走廊中行走，并指向走廊的起始位置。我们利用移动无线头皮 EEG 记录的振荡信号作为识别参与者基于自身运动和地标线索的表示何时首次出现的一种手段。我们发现，路径段，包括导航早期出现的交叉口，与之后的指向误差更密切相关，而与它们在编码过程中何时出现无关。我们还发现，在涉及交叉口的导航早期最早的部分中，额中线 theta 和后 alpha 振荡信号中包含了足够的信息，可以解码条件（即冲突与不冲突）。这些发现共同表明，交叉口在空间表示的早期发展中起着关键作用，这表明在导航过程中，行走路径的几何形状的记忆表示可能很早就开始发展，这支持了并行假设。
