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A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings

The ability to form a mental representation of the surroundings is a critical skill for spatial navigation and orientation in humans. Such a mental representation is known as a “cognitive map” and is formed as individuals familiarize themselves with the surrounding, providing detailed information ab...

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Autores principales: McLaren-Gradinaru, Michael, Burles, Ford, Dhillon, Inderpreet, Retsinas, Adam, Umiltà, Alberto, Hannah, Jaimy, Dolhan, Kira, Iaria, Giuseppe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6993182/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32038207
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00005
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author McLaren-Gradinaru, Michael
Burles, Ford
Dhillon, Inderpreet
Retsinas, Adam
Umiltà, Alberto
Hannah, Jaimy
Dolhan, Kira
Iaria, Giuseppe
author_facet McLaren-Gradinaru, Michael
Burles, Ford
Dhillon, Inderpreet
Retsinas, Adam
Umiltà, Alberto
Hannah, Jaimy
Dolhan, Kira
Iaria, Giuseppe
author_sort McLaren-Gradinaru, Michael
collection PubMed
description The ability to form a mental representation of the surroundings is a critical skill for spatial navigation and orientation in humans. Such a mental representation is known as a “cognitive map” and is formed as individuals familiarize themselves with the surrounding, providing detailed information about salient environmental landmarks and their spatial relationships. Despite evidence of the malleability and potential for training spatial orientation skills in humans, it remains unknown if the specific ability to form cognitive maps can be improved by an appositely developed training program. Here, we present a newly developed computerized 12-days training program in a virtual environment designed specifically to stimulate the acquisition of this important skill. We asked 15 healthy volunteers to complete the training program and perform a comprehensive spatial behavioral assessment before and after the training. We asked participants to become familiar with the environment by navigating a small area before slowly building them up to navigate within the larger and more complex environment; we asked them to travel back and forth between environmental landmarks until they had built an understanding of where those landmarks resided with respect to one another. This process repeated until participants had visited every landmark in the virtual town and had learned where each landmark resided with respect to the others. The results of this study confirmed the feasibility of the training program and suggested an improvement in the ability of participants to form mental representations of the spatial surrounding. This study provides preliminary findings on the feasibility of a 12-days program in training spatial orientation skills. We discuss the utility and potential impact of this training program in the lives of the many individuals affected by topographical disorientation as a result of an acquired or developmental condition.
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spelling pubmed-69931822020-02-07 A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings McLaren-Gradinaru, Michael Burles, Ford Dhillon, Inderpreet Retsinas, Adam Umiltà, Alberto Hannah, Jaimy Dolhan, Kira Iaria, Giuseppe Front Hum Neurosci Human Neuroscience The ability to form a mental representation of the surroundings is a critical skill for spatial navigation and orientation in humans. Such a mental representation is known as a “cognitive map” and is formed as individuals familiarize themselves with the surrounding, providing detailed information about salient environmental landmarks and their spatial relationships. Despite evidence of the malleability and potential for training spatial orientation skills in humans, it remains unknown if the specific ability to form cognitive maps can be improved by an appositely developed training program. Here, we present a newly developed computerized 12-days training program in a virtual environment designed specifically to stimulate the acquisition of this important skill. We asked 15 healthy volunteers to complete the training program and perform a comprehensive spatial behavioral assessment before and after the training. We asked participants to become familiar with the environment by navigating a small area before slowly building them up to navigate within the larger and more complex environment; we asked them to travel back and forth between environmental landmarks until they had built an understanding of where those landmarks resided with respect to one another. This process repeated until participants had visited every landmark in the virtual town and had learned where each landmark resided with respect to the others. The results of this study confirmed the feasibility of the training program and suggested an improvement in the ability of participants to form mental representations of the spatial surrounding. This study provides preliminary findings on the feasibility of a 12-days program in training spatial orientation skills. We discuss the utility and potential impact of this training program in the lives of the many individuals affected by topographical disorientation as a result of an acquired or developmental condition. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-01-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6993182/ /pubmed/32038207 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00005 Text en Copyright © 2020 McLaren-Gradinaru, Burles, Dhillon, Retsinas, Umiltà, Hannah, Dolhan and Iaria. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Human Neuroscience
McLaren-Gradinaru, Michael
Burles, Ford
Dhillon, Inderpreet
Retsinas, Adam
Umiltà, Alberto
Hannah, Jaimy
Dolhan, Kira
Iaria, Giuseppe
A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings
title A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings
title_full A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings
title_fullStr A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings
title_full_unstemmed A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings
title_short A Novel Training Program to Improve Human Spatial Orientation: Preliminary Findings
title_sort novel training program to improve human spatial orientation: preliminary findings
topic Human Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6993182/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32038207
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00005
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