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Dissociable cognitive mechanisms underlying human path integration

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Abstract

Path integration is a fundamental mechanism of spatial navigation. In non-human species, it is assumed to be an online process in which a homing vector is updated continuously during an outward journey. In contrast, human path integration has been conceptualized as a configural process in which travelers store working memory representations of path segments, with the computation of a homing vector only occurring when required. To resolve this apparent discrepancy, we tested whether humans can employ different path integration strategies in the same task. Using a triangle completion paradigm, participants were instructed either to continuously update the start position during locomotion (continuous strategy) or to remember the shape of the outbound path and to calculate home vectors on basis of this representation (configural strategy). While overall homing accuracy was superior in the configural condition, participants were quicker to respond during continuous updating, strongly suggesting that homing vectors were computed online. Corroborating these findings, we observed reliable differences in head orientation during the outbound path: when participants applied the continuous updating strategy, the head deviated significantly from straight ahead in direction of the start place, which can be interpreted as a continuous motor expression of the homing vector. Head orientation—a novel online measure for path integration—can thus inform about the underlying updating mechanism already during locomotion. In addition to demonstrating that humans can employ different cognitive strategies during path integration, our two-systems view helps to resolve recent controversies regarding the role of the medial temporal lobe in human path integration.

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Notes

  1. The right panel of Fig. 4 demonstrates substantial changes in head orientation at the beginning and the end of the second segment. As these head movements are likely to be related to whole body turnings, the first as well as the last 20 cm of the recordings of the head orientation along the second segment were discarded for this analysis.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Special thanks to H. H. Bülthoff and the members of the Virtual Reality Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen (Germany) for their support in this study.

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Correspondence to Jan M. Wiener.

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J. M. Wiener and T. Wolbers contributed equally to this manuscript.

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Wiener, J.M., Berthoz, A. & Wolbers, T. Dissociable cognitive mechanisms underlying human path integration. Exp Brain Res 208, 61–71 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2460-7

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