Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation
Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-020-62877-0
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发表时间：
2020-04-14
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Bohbot, Veronique D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Dahmani, Louisa;Bohbot, Veronique D.
全球定位系统 (GPS) 导航设备和应用在过去十年中已变得无处不在。然而，目前尚不清楚使用 GPS 是否会影响我们自己的内部导航系统或空间记忆，后者严重依赖于海马体。我们评估了 50 名常规驾驶员的终生 GPS 体验以及空间记忆的各个方面，包括空间记忆策略的使用、认知映射和使用虚拟导航任务的地标编码。我们首先提出横断面结果，表明终生 GPS 经验丰富的人在自我导航期间（即当他们需要在没有 GPS 的情况下导航时）具有较差的空间记忆。在后续会议中，13 名参与者在初次测试三年后接受了重新测试。尽管纵向样本很小，但我们观察到随着时间的推移，GPS 使用的重要影响，即自初始测试以来更多的 GPS 使用与海马依赖性空间记忆的急剧下降有关。重要的是，我们发现那些更多地使用 GPS 的人并没有这样做，因为他们觉得自己的方向感很差，这表明广泛使用 GPS 会导致空间记忆下降，而不是相反。在社会日益依赖 GPS 的背景下，这些发现具有重要意义。
Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation devices and applications have become ubiquitous over the last decade. However, it is unclear whether using GPS affects our own internal navigation system, or spatial memory, which critically relies on the hippocampus. We assessed the lifetime GPS experience of 50 regular drivers as well as various facets of spatial memory, including spatial memory strategy use, cognitive mapping, and landmark encoding using virtual navigation tasks. We first present cross-sectional results that show that people with greater lifetime GPS experience have worse spatial memory during self-guided navigation, i.e. when they are required to navigate without GPS. In a follow-up session, 13 participants were retested three years after initial testing. Although the longitudinal sample was small, we observed an important effect of GPS use over time, whereby greater GPS use since initial testing was associated with a steeper decline in hippocampal-dependent spatial memory. Importantly, we found that those who used GPS more did not do so because they felt they had a poor sense of direction, suggesting that extensive GPS use led to a decline in spatial memory rather than the other way around. These findings are significant in the context of society's increasing reliance on GPS.