There are few circumstances more fundamental to our existence in the fact that we are creatures that move through space. Almost all of the behaviors are essential to our survival - locating food, finding a mate, and avoiding predators - require navigation through the external world. A half-century of research suggests that humans and animals use cognitive """"""""maps"""""""" of the large-scale spatial structure of the world to facilitate this ability. Much of the information used to form these maps is initially acquired from vision. But this presents a puzzle: how do we transform visuospatial information initially acquired from specific views and specific instances into a viewpoint-invariant representation of environmental space that can be used for navigational planning? The research proposed here will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to address this question. On the basis of previous work, we hypothesize that the human brain supports at least three distinct hierarchical levels of spatial representation: (1) it represents the locations of objects and surfaces relative to various body parts such as the eye and hand (body-space); (2) it represents the relationship between the trunk of the body and a coordinate frame anchored on the set of immovable surfaces that defines the local scene (scene-space); (3) it represents the the location and orientation of the observer within the larger environment, including relative to locations that are currently """"""""over the horizon"""""""" (world-space). The first part of the proposed research will examine scene-space representations in parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortices with particular emphasis on uncovering the mechanisms by which these representations are learned from experience and change over time. The second part of the proposed research will examine the neural mechanisms involved in representing body-space and will functionally distinguish these mechanisms from those involved in representing scene-space. The third part of the proposed research will examine the neural mechanisms involved in representing world-space. Although this research does not examine spatial processing in nonsighted individuals, the results obtained will help us to distinguish between processes that are inextricably tied to vision and those that are relatively amodal. As such, this knowledge could be critical for development of rehabilitation strategies in the blind. ? ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EY016464-02
Application #
7189874
Study Section
Cognition and Perception Study Section (CP)
Program Officer
Oberdorfer, Michael
Project Start
2006-03-01
Project End
2011-02-28
Budget Start
2007-03-01
Budget End
2008-02-29
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2007
Total Cost
$343,734
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pennsylvania
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
042250712
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19104
Vass, Lindsay K; Epstein, Russell A (2017) Common Neural Representations for Visually Guided Reorientation and Spatial Imagery. Cereb Cortex 27:1457-1471
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Epstein, Russell A; Morgan, Lindsay K (2012) Neural responses to visual scenes reveals inconsistencies between fMRI adaptation and multivoxel pattern analysis. Neuropsychologia 50:530-43
MacEvoy, Sean P; Epstein, Russell A (2011) Constructing scenes from objects in human occipitotemporal cortex. Nat Neurosci 14:1323-9
Morgan, Lindsay K; Macevoy, Sean P; Aguirre, Geoffrey K et al. (2011) Distances between real-world locations are represented in the human hippocampus. J Neurosci 31:1238-45
Ward, Emily J; MacEvoy, Sean P; Epstein, Russell A (2010) Eye-centered encoding of visual space in scene-selective regions. J Vis 10:6
Epstein, Russell A; Ward, Emily J (2010) How reliable are visual context effects in the parahippocampal place area? Cereb Cortex 20:294-303

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