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Spatial Orientation and Disorientation
Published in Anthony N. Nicholson, The Neurosciences and the Practice of Aviation Medicine, 2017
The next development was the discovery of head direction cells (Taube et al., 1990). Whereas place cells are largely confined to the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, head direction cells are more widely distributed, being found in the lateral mammillary nucleus, anterodorsal thalamus, posterior subiculum and entorhinal cortex. As their name implies, head direction cells show a peak of activity when the head is facing in a particular direction independent of the location (Figure 4.2). The preferred firing direction of these cells is determined, as with place cells, by the visual surroundings, particularly distant rather than nearby landmarks. It has been shown that the preferred firing direction is retained with reasonable accuracy if an animal is free to move through a passage containing two right-angle corners into a new visual environment. The accuracy of retention is somewhat less if the animal has to make the journey in the dark, and much less if it is passively transported to the new location. If the animal is free to move about its familiar environment and the light is switched off, the preferred firing direction of these cells, though initially maintained, tends to drift with time.
Comprehensive Approach to Pilot Disorientation Countermeasures
Published in Michael A. Vidulich, Pamela S. Tsang, Improving Aviation Performance through Applying Engineering Psychology, 2019
Recent neuroscience research suggested that the human brain is not truly organized in terms of systems that process a single sensory modality, such as vision, balance, touch or hearing, but rather processes information about spatial relationships, movements, and shapes (Pascal-Leone & Hamilton, 2001). For example, young children with retinoblastoma (causing vision loss from an early age) exhibit a larger volume of auditory cortex (Hoover, Harris & Steeves, 2012; Nys, Aerts, Ytebrouck, Vreysen, Laeremans, & Arckens et al., 2014), which demonstrates an adaptive reorganization of neurons to integrate the function of two or more sensory systems (cross modal plasticity). Furthermore, specific neurons involved in navigation have been found. For example, “Head Direction Cells” in the rat’s anterior thalamic region (Taube, Muller & Ranck, 1990; Taube 1998) and “Path Cells” in the entorhinal cortex of neurosurgical patients (Jacobs, Kahana, Ekstrom, Mollison & Fried, 2010) fire only when subjects orient their head in selective directions, turning either clockwise or counterclockwise. The behavior of these cells was also found to be influenced by landmarks as well as motor and vestibular information concerning how the head moves through space. The “Grid Cells” in the entorhinal cortex of the rats act as the brain’s Global Positioning System (GPS) indicating where they are relative to where they started (Hafting, Fyhn, Molden, Moser, & Moser, 2005; Moser, Kropff & Moser, 2008; Sargolini, Fyhn, Hafting, McNaughton, Witter, Moser, & Moser et al. 2006). Finally, the “Place Cells” in the hippocampus of humans activates when we move into a specific location, so that such groups of Place Cells form a map of the environment (O’Keefe & Burgess, 2005). How neuroplasticity and specific orientation neurons influence the mechanisms of pilot orientation in flight remains to be investigated.
A scientometric analysis and review of spatial cognition studies within the framework of neuroscience and architecture
Published in Architectural Science Review, 2021
The spatial cognition line of enquiry showed that there are a number of brain cells involved during navigation. They are called place, grid, border and head direction cells. They, and their roles in navigation, constitute the main research theme of Cluster 10. Navigation-related brain cells were first discovered in the rodent hippocampus, but further studies demonstrated that humans also have them. O’Keefe and Dostrovsky (1971) discovered place cells in rats which fire (become active) as a function of the spatial position of the animal. Place cells seem to be allocentric because a cell fires when the animal is in that place regardless of the way it is facing. Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex (a brain area which provides information to the hippocampus) fire in a regular hexagonal pattern on the floor of the environment in which the animal is located. Grid cells are thought to involve a distance-measuring process of the brain. Head direction cells in several parts of the brain fire on the basis of the facing direction. They create the sense of direction and inform the hippocampal system about it. Border cells in the entorhinal cortex fire at set distances from boundaries in the navigation environment. More than forty years of research on spatial cognition confirms that cognitive maps are neutrally instantiated by place, grid, head direction and border cells (Epstein et al. 2017).
Subjective disorientation as a metacognitive feeling
Published in Spatial Cognition & Computation, 2020
Pablo Fernández Velasco, Roberto Casati
The notion of a cognitive map gained neuroscientific support with the discovery of place cells, a set of cells in the rat’s hippocampus that fire as a function of their spatial location (O’Keefe & Dostrovsky, 1971). Later, the discovery of grid cells. head direction cells and boundary vector cells further supported the existence of cognitive maps, as these mechanisms are best interpreted as feeding map-like representations of space. Grid cells fire in a hexagonal grid that corresponds with the environment floor (Hafting et al., 2005). Head direction cells fire according to head orientation (Ranck, 1985; Taube et al., 1990). Boundary vector cells fire when the rat gets to a specific distance from an environmental boundary (Barry et al, 2006). In hindsight, the behavior of specialized cells can be interpreted as constraining the solution to the space representation problem: place, grid, head orientation and boundary cells provide individual, metric, angle and topological constraints respectively (Fernandez Velasco & Casati 2019). Dudchenko argues that, if the idea of a cognitive map can be extrapolated to humans (see Epstein et al., 2017 for a review of empirical literature supporting this extrapolation), it seems that visual landmarks play an important role in anchoring these cognitive maps (see Yoder, Clark, & Taube, 2011). This is because “the head direction, grid, and place cell systems can be re-set by salient landmarks” (p.252, Dudchenko, 2010). In other words, the head direction system tracks visual landmarks in order to update the subject’s location within a cognitive map.