Overcoming navigational challenges: A novel approach to the study and assessment of topographical orientation

Several studies investigating environmental navigation require participants to navigate in virtual environments, in which the proprioceptive and vestibular components present during real environmental navigation are lost. Here, we aimed to provide a novel computerized ecological navigational battery, investigating whether the absence of proprioceptive and vestibular inputs yields a representation of the navigational space comparable to that acquired ecologically. In Study 1, 38 participants underwent two sets of tasks, one performed in a laboratory-based setting (LBS) and the other in an ecological environment (EE), with both including evaluation of route, landmark, and survey knowledge and a landmark ordering task. All tasks, except the route task, significantly correlated between EE and LBS. In LBS, performance in the landmark ordering task was predicted by that in the survey task, but not by those in the route and landmark tasks. Results of Study 1 were replicated in Study 2, in which 44 participants completed a modified and shorter online version of LBS tests. Reliability of the online LBS tests was also tested and showed a moderate-to-high internal consistency. Overall, results show that the conditions in which tasks are performed affect the acquisition of route knowledge, likely due to the lack of proprioceptive and vestibular information in LBS. However, LBS tasks presented here provide a standard battery of tests that can overcome the replicability problems encountered by ecological navigation tests, while taking into consideration all the complexities of navigational processes in terms of the use of landmark, route, and survey strategies.

Places and Non-Places

This chapter examines how witnesses animate places, both those reconstructed in narrative and those displayed on camera. Moreover, this chapter delves into the question of catastrophe as bodily perception. Memories of radical physical alienation, kinetic maneuvering, and topographical orientation all contribute to the witness’s notion of history. For witnesses testifying in Israeli and North American settings, their physical environments support different narratives of disembedding. Witnesses’ sense that something about themselves and the world has drastically changed can be affirmed by the physical scenery of today, which is, in fact, very different than the one within which they were born. Witnesses testifying in Yiddish in Lithuania have substantially different spatial guidelines when telling their stories. In this setting, progression in time is not matched by movement in space. The cities of Kovna, Vilna, and Shavl provide images of both prewar origin and postwar destination. Even dark places—ghettos and shootings pits—can intermingle with the geography of the everyday.

Topographical orientation as a model of plasticity in children with perinatal stroke

Background: Children with perinatal stroke go on to develop most cognitive skills (e.g. language) due to brain plasticity; however, their performance is usually poor when compared to age-matched controls, indicating a reduced potential compared to uninjured children. To date, how plasticity after early injury affects the development of complex cognitive skills remains uncertain. Here, we use topographical orientation, which relies on integration of several cognitive processes underlain by widespread neural networks, as a model to test plasticity in complex behaviour. Methods: Children with perinatal stroke and age-matched controls were tested with a neuropsychological battery and a novel navigation task. In addition, for each patient, we obtained the most recent MRI scan to assess the effects of lesion characteristics on performance at the navigational task. Results: Children with history of injury performed worse than controls, and their scores were not different based on lesion’s laterality, location or functional region affected. In particular, involvement of regions known to contribute to spatial orientation did not result in significantly decreased performance. Conclusions: As seen in other skills, orientation was preserved, but decreased when compared to age-matched controls. Given its cognitive and neural complexity, topographical orientation may be used as a model for network plasticity after early injury.

Assessing Topographical Orientation Skills in Cannabis Users

The long-term effects of cannabis on human cognition are still unclear, but, considering that cannabis is a widely used substance and, overall, its potential use in therapeutic interventions, it is important to evaluate them. We hypothesize that the discrepancies among studies could be attributed to the specific cognitive function investigated and that skills subserved by the hippocampus, such as the spatial orientation abilities and, specifically, the ability to form and use cognitive maps, should be more compromised than others. Indeed it has been showed that cannabis users have a reduced hippocampus and that the hippocampus is the brain region in which cannabis has the greatest effect since it contains the highest concentration of cannabinoid receptors. To test this hypothesis we asked 15 heavy cannabis users and 19 nonusers to perform a virtual navigational test, the CMT, that assesses the ability to form and use cognitive maps. We found that using cannabis has no effect on these hippocampus-dependent orientation skills. We discuss the implications of our findings and how they relate to evidence reported in the literature that the intervention of functional reorganization mechanisms in cannabis user allows them to cope with the cognitive demands of navigational tasks.

Familiarity and Environmental Representations of a City: A Self-Report Study

“Sense of direction” is usually assessed by self-report. Several internal factors contribute to proficiency in navigation: spatial cognitive style, respondent's sex, and familiarity with the environment; however, questionnaires assessing sense of direction do not include all these factors. In a recent study, Nori and Piccardi reported that environmental familiarity was crucial for topographical orientation. Regardless of a person's spatial cognitive style (i.e., landmark, route, or survey), the greater their familiarity with the environment, the better their performance. In this study, a questionnaire was used, the Familiarity and Spatial Cognitive Style Scale, to measure 208 women's sense of direction and knowledge of their city of residence. Analysis showed that Spatial Cognitive Style predicted sense of direction but not town knowledge. By contrast, familiarity played a crucial role in both areas, confirming the importance of having a tool to assess this factor.

Topographical disorientation in Alzheimer's disease

Topographical disorientation (TD) has not been as extensively studied as other frequent manifestations of Alzheimer's disease (AD). OBJECTIVE: To verify the occurrence of TD and to identify the neuropsychological dysfunctions associated with TD in AD. METHOD: Thirty patients with probable AD, their caregivers and 30 subjects without dementia (controls) were interviewed with a questionnaire and evaluated with tests related to topographical orientation. RESULTS: AD patients, even those with mild dementia, differ from controls in the questionnaire on topographical orientation and in most neuropsychological tests except for tests of spatial working memory, point localization, three dimension and nonsense figure copy. When the performances in the neuropsychological tests of patients with mild or moderate dementia were compared, only landmark recognition and route description were more impaired in moderate dementia. CONCLUSION: TD occurs even in mild dementia of AD, a finding apparently not explained by the impairments of more elementary spatial functions.