Vestibular cues improve landmark-based route navigation: A simulated driving study

Translating spatial navigation evaluation from experimental to clinical settings: The virtual environments navigation assessment (VIENNA)

Spatial navigation abilities are frequently impaired in neurological disorders and they also decline with normal aging. Researchers and clinicians therefore need valid and easy-to-use spatial navigation assessment tools to study the impact of different neuropathologies and prevent relevant cognitive impairments from going undetected. However, current experimental paradigms rarely address which cognitive processes they recruit, often have resource-intensive setups, and usually require active navigation, e.g., using a joystick or keyboard, thus confounding cognitive performance with fine motor skills. Yet, for clinical feasibility, time-efficient paradigms are needed that are informative and easy to administer in participants with limited technical experience and diverging impairments. Here, we introduce the virtual environments navigation assessment (VIENNA), a virtual adaptation of a brief, standardized, and intuitive spatial navigation paradigm ( https://osf.io/kp4c5/ ). VIENNA is designed to assess spatial navigation without episodic memory demands, requires no interface device, and takes about 16 min to complete. We evaluated VIENNA in 79 healthy middle-aged to older participants (50-85 years) and provide evidence for its feasibility and construct validity. Tests of visuospatial and executive functions, but not episodic memory or selective attention, were identified as cognitive correlates of VIENNA, even when controlling for participant age and overall cognitive performance. Furthermore, VIENNA scores correlated with subjective navigation ability and age, but not with depressiveness, cognitive complaints, or education. The straightforward administration of VIENNA allows for its integration into routine neuropsychological assessments and enables differentiated evaluation of spatial navigation performance in patients with motor impairments and episodic memory deficits.

Multisensory input modulates memory-guided spatial navigation in humans

Efficient navigation is supported by a cognitive map of space. The hippocampus plays a key role for this map by linking multimodal sensory information with spatial memory representations. However, in human navigation studies, the full range of sensory information is often unavailable due to the stationarity of experimental setups. We investigated the contribution of multisensory information to memory-guided spatial navigation by presenting a virtual version of the Morris water maze on a screen and in an immersive mobile virtual reality setup. Patients with hippocampal lesions and matched controls navigated to memorized object locations in relation to surrounding landmarks. Our results show that availability of multisensory input improves memory-guided spatial navigation in both groups. It has distinct effects on navigational behaviour, with greater improvement in spatial memory performance in patients. We conclude that congruent multisensory information shifts computations to extrahippocampal areas that support spatial navigation and compensates for spatial navigation deficits.

Long-lasting spatial memory deficits and impaired hippocampal plasticity following unilateral vestibular loss

Unilateral vestibular loss (UVL) induces a characteristic vestibular syndrome composed of various posturo-locomotor, oculomotor, vegetative and perceptivo-cognitive symptoms. Functional deficits are progressively recovered over time during vestibular compensation, that is supported by the expression of multiscale plasticity mechanisms. While the dynamic of post-UVL posturo-locomotor and oculomotor deficits is well characterized, the expression over time of the cognitive deficits, and in particular spatial memory deficits, is still debated. In this study we aimed at investigating spatial memory deficits and their recovery in a rat model of unilateral vestibular neurectomy (UVN), using a wide spectrum of behavioral tasks. In parallel, we analyzed markers of hippocampal plasticity involved in learning and memory. Our results indicate the UVN affects all domains of spatial memory, from working memory to reference memory and object-in-place recognition. These deficits are associated with long-lasting impaired plasticity in the ipsilesional hippocampus. These results highlight the crucial role of symmetrical vestibular information in spatial memory and contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive disorders observed in vestibular patients.

Multisensory GPS impact on spatial representation in an immersive virtual reality driving game

Individuals are increasingly relying on GPS devices to orient and find their way in their environment and research has pointed to a negative impact of navigational systems on spatial memory. We used immersive virtual reality to examine whether an audio–visual navigational aid can counteract the negative impact of visual only or auditory only GPS systems. We also examined the effect of spatial representation preferences and abilities when using different GPS systems. Thirty-four participants completed an IVR driving game including 4 GPS conditions (No GPS; audio GPS; visual GPS; audio–visual GPS). After driving one of the routes in one of the 4 GPS conditions, participants were asked to drive to a target landmark they had previously encountered. The audio–visual GPS condition returned more accurate performance than the visual and no GPS condition. General orientation ability predicted the distance to the target landmark for the visual and the audio–visual GPS conditions, while landmark preference predicted performance in the audio GPS condition. Finally, the variability in end distance to the target landmark was significantly reduced in the audio–visual GPS condition when compared to the visual and audio GPS conditions. These findings support theories of spatial cognition and inform the optimisation of GPS designs.