1-069 - Geometric reorientation: Neural and cognitive signatures in mice and humans

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

When an organism has lost its bearings and is no longer sure of what direction it is facing, it relies upon certain cues in the environment to reestablish the relationship between its own heading and the external surround. Cheng & Gallistel (1984) provided groundbreaking evidence that room-shape geometry is the privileged form of input used to accomplish this process of reorientation. Although numerous studies have extended these findings to different species and enclosures of different geometric shapes, much remains unknown about the cognitive systems supporting geometric reorientation, their instantiation in the brain, and their potential relationship to other spatial abilities across development. Thus, the goal of this symposium is to bring together new research of varying methodologies that furthers our understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying geometric reorientation. The first paper presents evidence that while geometry is specifically used when an animal must retrieve its heading direction, both featural and spatial information can be used to recognize a particular place. The second paper highlights an area in the human brain that encodes the geometric structure of scene boundaries and documents the developmental time point at which children are able to reorient by non-geometric, abstract boundaries. The final paper discusses the relationship between children’s non-symbolic use of geometry for reorientation and their symbolic use of geometry for spatial symbol reading. The symposium will close with a discussion of how these studies collectively shed light on both the neural bases and developing cognitive mechanisms underlying reorientation.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins University

Discussant

• Sang Ah Lee, University of Trento

Individual Presentations

• Place recognition and heading retrieval are dissociable in mice (and possibly men) - Presenting Author: Joshua B. Julian, University of Pennsylvania; Alexander Keinath, University of Pennsylvania; Isabel Muzzio, University of Pennsylvania; Russell A. Epstein, University of Pennsylvania

• Neural and behavioral sensitivity to boundary cues across development - Presenting Author: Katrina Ferrara, Johns Hopkins University; Soojin Park, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University; Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins University

• Reorientation ability predicts early spatial symbol reading - Presenting Author: Moira R. Dillon, Harvard University; Elizabeth Spelke, Harvard Univ