Animals and humans are remarkable in their ability to flexibly adapt to changes in their surroundings. Navigational flexibility may take many forms and in this thesis we investigate its neural and behavioral underpinnings using a variety of methods and tasks tailored to each specific research aim. These methods include functional resonance magnetic imaging (fMRI), freely moving virtual reality, desktop virtual reality, large-scale online testing, and computational modelling. First, we reanalysed previously collected rodent data in the lab to better under- stand behavioural bias that may occur during goal-directed navigation tasks. Based on finding some biases we designed a new approach of simulating results on maze configurations prior to data collection to select the ideal mazes for our task. In a parallel line of methods development, we designed a freely moving navigation task using large-scale wireless virtual reality in a 10x10 space. We compared human behaviour to that of a select number of reinforcement learning agents to investigate the feasibility of computational modelling approaches to freely moving behaviour. Second, we further developed our new approach of simulating results on maze configuration to design a novel spatial navigation task used in a parallel experiment in both rats and humans. We report the human findings using desktop virtual reality and fMRI. We identified a network of regions including hippocampal, caudate nu- cleus, and lateral orbitofrontal cortex involvement in learning hidden goal locations. We also identified a positive correlation between Euclidean goal distance and brain activity in the caudate nucleus during ongoing navigation. Third, we developed a large online testing paradigm to investigate the role of home environment on wayfinding ability. We extended previous reports that street network complexity is beneficial in improving wayfinding ability as measured using a previously reported virtual navigation game, Sea Hero Quest, as well as in a novel virtual navigation game, ...


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    Title :

    Neural basis of route-planning and goal-coding during flexible navigation


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2022-05-28


    Remarks:

    Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London).


    Type of media :

    Theses


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English


    Classification :

    DDC:    629



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