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Abstract Representations of Location and Facing Direction in the Human Brain
Open accessAbstract
Humans, like other mobile organisms, rely on spatial representations to guide navigation from place to place. Although previous work has identified neural systems involved in wayfinding, the specific spatial codes supported by these systems are not well understood. We use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify regions within the human medial temporal and medial parietal lobes that encode two fundamental spatial quantities—location and facing direction—in a manner that abstracts away from sensory inputs. University students were scanned while viewing photographs taken at several familiar campus locations. Multivoxel pattern analyses indicated that the left presubiculum, retrosplenial complex, and parietal-occipital sulcus coded location identity even across non-overlapping views, whereas the right presubiculum coded facing direction even across noncontiguous locations. The location and direction codes supported by these regions may be critical to our ability to navigate within the extended environment and to understand its large-scale spatial structure.
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“recent work has observed similar spatial codes in these regions in humans4–8”
From Anchoring the neural compass: coding of local spatial reference frames in human medial parietal lobe (2014) · cites this paper as [4]
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“and we previously reported that multivoxel patterns elicited in RSC when viewing familiar scenes contain information about location and direction that is independent of the specific view4.”
From Anchoring the neural compass: coding of local spatial reference frames in human medial parietal lobe (2014) · cites this paper as [4]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Vass, L. K., & Epstein, R. A.
- Affiliations
- University of Pennsylvania (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2013-04-03
- Volume
- 33
- Issue
- 14
- Pages
- 6133-6142
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC3656495
- OpenAlex
- W2046415503
- Cited by
- 131
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 25 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 2
- Type
- conference abstract
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0541957)
- National Institutes of Health (R01-EY016464)
- National Eye Institute (R01EY016464)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (F31NS074729)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Vestibular and auditory disorders
- Keywords
- spatial representation, location encoding, wayfinding, presubiculum, retrosplenial complex, medial temporal lobe, navigation, multi-voxel pattern analysis
- MeSH terms
- Analysis of Variance, Brain, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Orientation, Oxygen, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Space Perception, Young Adult
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