Ricerc@Sapienza

Herein, we investigate how the three types of mental spatial representation (landmark, route and survey) are reorganized to perform wayfinding and homing behaviour. We also investigate the contribution of visuo-spatial working memory in reaching and in vista space in performing the retracing of the path.

Humans, like animals, rely on an accurate knowledge of one’s spatial position and facing direction to keep orientated in the surrounding space. Although previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that scene-selective regions (the parahippocampal place area or PPA, the occipital place area or OPA and the retrosplenial complex or RSC), and the hippocampus (HC) are implicated in coding position and facing direction within small-(room-sized) and large-scale navigational environments, little is known about how these regions represent these spatial quantities in a large open-field environment.

Keeping oriented in the surrounding space requires an accurate representation of one's spatial position and facing direction. Although previous studies provided evidence of specific spatial codes for position and direction within room-sized and large-scale navigational environments, little is known about the mechanisms by which these spatial quantities are represented in a real small-scale environment. Here, we used two spatial tasks requiring participants to encode their own position and facing direction on a series of pictures taken from a familiar circular square.