NCS-FO: The Neural Basis of Human Spatial Navigation in Large-Scale Virtual Spaces with Vestibular Input

人们如何在导航时了解大规模的空间，比如他们访问的新城镇和城市？解决这个问题带来了令人惊讶的障碍，例如难以优化用于实验测试的大规模空间和控制已有知识。桌面虚拟现实提供了一种解决这个问题的可能方法，尽管这种测试提供了一种不完整的全身沉浸式体验，即现实世界的导航。研究人员将开发一种2-D跑步机，配以头戴式显示器，以允许自由放大大规模的虚拟空间。该设备的成功开发具有重要的社会应用。例如，具有丰富的基于身体的线索的预训练有可能增加对真实的世界环境的知识转移，这可能有助于训练个人，例如野外环境中的第一响应者和导航。此外，该设备和拟议的实验将提供一个全新的理解人类空间导航的神经基础与基于身体的线索，基本上准确建模空间认知和理解为什么我们经常迷路时，我们访问新的城市。几乎所有的理论的神经基础的空间导航，主要是在自由导航啮齿动物，假设基于身体的线索的重要性对该代码至关重要。然而，绝大多数对人类的研究都涉及桌面虚拟现实中的导航。将开发的新设备将允许基于2-D运动的VR导航，允许全方位的身体/头部旋转和放大。这些实验将确定1）基于身体的输入对人类空间导航的贡献，以及基于身体的VR导航如何增强对真实的世界环境的后续知识2）大脑如何通过采用同步EEG记录来编码空间距离3）大脑如何通过使用高-功能磁共振成像（fMRI）。这些实验的结果对于测试空间导航模型和推进我们对我们采用视觉与基于身体的线索来表示空间环境的程度的理解非常重要，这是目前该领域的一个重要辩论问题。

How do people learn large-scale spaces, like new towns and cities that they visit, as they navigate? Addressing this question poses surprising obstacles, such as the difficulty in optimizing large-scale spaces for experimental testing and controlling for pre-existing knowledge. Desktop virtual reality offers one possible way to address this question, although such testing offers an incomplete rendition of the full-body, immersive experience that is real-world navigation. Researchers will develop a 2-D treadmill coupled with a head-mounted display to allow free ambulation of large-scale virtual spaces. Successful development of this device has important societal applications. For example, pre-training with enriched body-based cues has the potential to increase knowledge transfer to real world environments, which could be helpful for training individuals such as first-responders and navigation in wilderness environments. Also, the device and proposed experiments will provide a completely novel understanding of the neural basis of human spatial navigation with body-based cues, fundamental to accurately modeling spatial cognition and understanding why we often get lost when we visit new cities.Almost all theories of the neural basis of spatial navigation, largely developed in freely navigating rodents, assume the critical importance of importance of body-based cues to this code. Yet the vast majority of studies in humans involve navigation in desktop virtual reality. The novel device that will be developed will permit 2-D locomotion-based VR navigation, allowing a full range of body/head rotations and ambulation. The experiments will determine 1) the contributions of body-based input to human spatial navigation and how navigation in VR with body-based can enhance subsequent knowledge of real world environments 2) how the brain codes spatial distance by employing simultaneous EEG recordings 3) how the brain codes the relative directions of landmarks in the environment by modeling the underlying multidimensional brain networks using high-resolution functional magnetic imaging (fMRI). The outcomes from these experiments will be important to testing models of spatial navigation and advancing our understanding of the extent to which we employ visual vs. body-based cues to represent spatial environments, currently an issue of significant debate in the field.