The Basics of Spatial Navigation: More Than Just Point A to Point B

Previously, I introduced the topic of spatial navigation and the intricate dance our brains perform to make sense of the world around us. Today, we're taking a deeper dive, exploring the whats, whys, and hows behind our ability to find our way in the wide world. It might seem at first glance that the journey between Point A and Point B is a simple one. However, I hope that you'll see by the end of this section that it is in fact a symphony of complex cognitive processes, each playing its part in guiding us through the not only our environment, but also helping us to make sense of more abstract concepts such as family trees, mathematical graphs, and even philosophical arguments.

What is it?

Diverse Definitions: Spatial Navigation's Many Interpretations

Spatial navigation, as it turns out, is a chameleon of a concept, changing its colours depending on who you ask. A psychologist might view it through the lens of human behaviour and emotions, focusing on how personal interactions, societal positions, and individual differences shape our movement and interaction with spaces. Meanwhile, a neuroscientist dives deep into the brain's intricate architecture, exploring how we not only navigate the physical world but also abstract representations like music or databases.

For a computer scientist, spatial navigation is a dance of algorithms, guiding movement through virtual or real spaces. An ecologist might see it as nature's GPS, a set of evolved skills supporting exploration and migration. And a mathematician? They might frame it in terms of formal systems, geometries, and algorithms. Amidst this diversity, however, there's a common thread that binds these perspectives.

The Three Pillars: Relations, Intention, and Movement

From considering these different perspectives, we can derive three core elements that lay at the heart of spatial navigation: relations, intention, and movement.

Relations are the bridges connecting points or concepts. It's the understanding that the Arctic is north of the equator or the realization that a circle's center is equidistant from its edges. They're statements about how two or more things can be thought of as connected, essential for the 'spatial' part of 'spatial navigation'.

Intention and Movement, on the other hand, breathe life into navigation. Merely knowing that London is south of York doesn't equate to navigation. It's the act of tracing that route, of intentionally moving from one point to another, that truly defines the journey. If one were to intend to travel South from York to London, but accidentally misread a compass and travelled South-West to Leeds, it wouldn't be true navigation. The initial intention to transition from point A to point B must be present.

Thus, when we talk about spatial navigation, we're referring to the act of relating two points (or concepts) together and then intentionally transitioning that relationship. It's not just about stating learned relationships or aimless exploration; there's a purposeful movement at its core. That's what we'll be exploring - how the brain enables us to purposefully transition across known relationships.

Why is Navigation an Important Ability?

An Evolutionary Perspective: It likely goes without saying that the ability to find our way was exceptionally important for our early ancestors. Their survival depended on finding food, locating shelter, and evading predators. Thus, they had to remember where good hunting grounds were, or where edible fruits and plants could be found regularly. They had to be able to find their way back to their settlements after searching for food, and to recognise where water would likely collect when exploring new regions. These, and many more environmental pressures, would have caused our brains to slowly evolve and develop sophisticated mechanisms to help us find our way in the world, thereby ensuring our survival and success as a species.

Modern-day Relevance: Of course, it's pretty unlikely that you'll be hunted by a pack of wolves, or stalked by a jaguar throughout the night in this day and age. You likely don't go out foraging for fungi and berries to stave off starvation, and you're probably never more than a few minutes walk away from a free or cheap water source.  Nevertheless, the importance of spatial navigation remains paramount. Our daily lives are filled with countless navigation tasks, from the mundane to the complex. From finding your way to the snacks aisle in the supermarket, to locating your car in the car park. From driving from your house to the airport, to finding the correct street for the villa you rented. From tracking down a leaky pipe, to plotting the current flow in an electrical circuit. And from navigating a computer new file system to navigating the intricate web of social dynamics in a new workplace. Even in our technologically advanced age, our ability to understand, interpret, and move through various spaces – both physical and abstract – plays a pivotal role in our daily successes and challenges.

Why Should I Care?

Why Should We Study Spatial Navigation and Cognition?

Given that the ability to navigate played and still plays such a pivotal role in our lives and development, it should come as no surprise that there is a vast wealth of insights to be gleamed from it's study. As it currently stands, the study of navigation (and of spatial cognition in general) benefits a wide variety of areas, including healthcare, technology, and fundamental scientific understanding. Let's delve into why this area of study is so pivotal.

Health: Navigating Development, Disease, and Recovery

Developmental Insights: Observing how children navigate their surroundings provides a rich understanding of cognitive development. It's not just about how they find their way in a park, but how their brains evolve to process complex information.

For example, even before they can walk, infants display an understanding of spatial relationships. They track moving objects, anticipate their trajectories, and show surprise when objects don't behave as expected. However, it's not until toddlers begin to walk and explore that they rely heavily on landmarks and use trial-and-error methods. Their navigation is primarily egocentric, meaning they understand space in relation to themselves. For instance, a toy might be "in front of me" rather than "in the northwest corner of the room." (for a great example of this, check out Piaget's 3 mountains task).

By understanding these developmental transitions, we can understand how to best support childhood learning. For instance, it would not be a very effective teaching method to teach toddlers about social faux pas, as they simply haven't yet developed the cognitive frameworks to understand other's perspectives yet, but if we remain aware of when the child reaches the point at which they can grasp this subject, then they can be taught far sooner, and build upon that understanding for longer than if we were to arbitrarily assign an age at which to teach these concepts.

Disease and Early Detection: Reductions in spatial abilities can be early indicators of neurological conditions like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. By understanding these early signs, we can potentially intervene sooner, altering the course of these diseases.

For instance, Alzheimer's disease is characterised by a loss of episodic memory, caused by slowly increasing damage to a region of the brain known as the hippocampus and it's surrounding areas. As such, traditional methods of detecting Alzheimer's have relied upon testing memory recall. However, the hippocampus is also heavily involved with spatial cognition as well, something we'll discuss in later sections. This understanding led to a number of studies testing whether spatial navigation and cognition tests could better detect Alzheimer's at an earlier stage, some of which found that they could indeed use such tests to detect at-risk patients much earlier and with greater accuracy.

Earlier detection allows for earlier interventions to be employed, potentially extending the time these patients have with their full mental faculties, and offering longer windows for new treatments to be developed and refined. This is crucial. For example, in an unprecedented display of collaboration, pharmaceutical companies recently shared data amongst one-another to determine why various human-stage drug trials had failed. Ultimately, it was found that some of these promising drugs were likely ineffective due to the late progression of the disease, and that treatment at earlier stages with such lower quantities of the drugs may be beneficial in treatment and prevention of the protein build-ups that cause Alzheimer's. Thus, if we can screen for Alzheimer's early, then these treatment options become viable. For more details, check out the podcast by nature on the topic.

Therapeutic Pathways: For individuals who've faced brain injuries or other conditions that impair spatial navigation, insights from this field can guide rehabilitation strategies, offering hope for recovery and improved quality of life.

For instance, one of the most remarkable discoveries in neuroscience is the brain's plasticity – its ability to adapt, reorganize, and form new connections. By understanding the neural mechanisms of spatial navigation, therapists can design exercises and interventions harness this plasticity, helping patients retrain and strengthen the affected brain regions.

Technology can help here too, with VR proving to be a promising tool in cognitive rehabilitation, allowing for tailored virtual environments to be created to challenge and train an individual's spatial navigation skills in a controlled setting. This not only allows for targeted therapy, but also provides immediate feedback, helping patients and therapists track their progress and change their focus in real time.

Such interventions don't just improve spatial navigation, but also enhance the individual's overall quality of life, as spatial navigation is intertwined with other cognitive functions like attention, memory, and decision-making. Thus, it is important for therapists and healthcare professionals to understand how each of these aspects affect one-another, and can help to compensate for and reinforce one-another.

As such, research into spatial cognition and related faculties is essential for supporting such therapy, as being able to navigate one's environment confidently can restore a sense of independence, reduce anxiety associated with getting lost or disoriented, and foster a sense of empowerment, ultimately leading to a better quality of life.

Technology: Charting the Future

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics: Researching the brain's strategies for spatial navigation can inspire algorithms for robots and AI systems. For instance, consider the current state of self-driving cars; while they're increasingly prevalent, they still lean on human oversight. To remove this reliance and enable these vehicles to truly drive autonomously, they must be able to not only pinpoint their own position relative to their surroundings, but they must also be able to adeptly navigate while responding hazards and unexpected changes in the environment.

One key inspiration for researchers in this domain is the human visual system. Our brains employ a dual-pathway approach: the 'what' pathway, which discerns the nature and attributes of what we see, and the 'where' pathway, which locates these objects in space. These pathways converge in the Medial Temporal Lobe, encompassing regions like the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, known for their roles in memory and spatial cognition. Here, the combined data supports our ability to navigate.

By emulating the functions of these neural pathways and regions, researchers aim to enhance AI capabilities. This knowledge can empower warehouse robots to identify stock discrepancies or refine the navigational prowess of self-driving cars. For a deeper dive into how spatial research and AI are interlinked, I recommend this editorial from Frontiers as a good starting point.

Virtual and Augmented Reality: As digital realms become more integrated into our lives, understanding human spatial navigation is crucial. It ensures that VR and AR environments are intuitive, immersive, and aligned with our innate abilities. I mentioned earlier how VR can be used in therapeutic settings, but it also has other applications, from supporting a more natural communication system to enabling exploration and tailored learning within educational settings.

However, if these virtual spaces do not conform to how our brain processes the world around us, then this may create friction between the user and the VR world, making for uncomfortable experiences. An example of this is the motion sickness some users experience when using VR headsets. Thus, a better understanding of how we integrate the visual data we receive with our knowledge of the world could provide potential avenues to explore in overcoming such issues.

Scientific Progress: Unravelling Mysteries

Finally, perhaps the most obvious advantage from studying spatial navigation is the scientific advances it could help support. For instance, it might help us to understand our evolutionary history, as our ability to navigate complex terrains might have conferred considerable evolutionary advantages. By studying this, we gain a window into the challenges and environments our ancestors faced.

Additionally, such research can give further insights into how our brain functions and performs the wide breadth of tasks they do, as the brain is heavily interconnected. It's hard to predict exactly what benefits might arise from the study of the brain as a whole, but there are many examples where such studies have had knock-on effects.

For instance, Mirror Neurons were originally discovered in the premotor cortex of monkeys. These neurons fire both when the agent performs an action and when it observes another agent performing the same action. This discovery has led to a deeper understanding of empathy, imitation, and even the basis of language in humans. It has implications for understanding autism, as some researchers believe that a dysfunction in the mirror neuron system might underlie some of the social difficulties experienced by individuals with autism.

Similarly, a technique called Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) was originally developed to treat movement disorders like Parkinson's disease by targeting specific regions of the brain. Since then, DBS has been explored as a therapeutic technique for other conditions like depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder because of research showing how regions affected by these conditions of the brain are connected to regions that are suitable for DBS. Thus, researchers can stimulate these parts of the brain so as to treat another part, thereby expanding the potential applications of the technique.

In Summary:

There are many examples of the current and potential applications of spatial research, spanning fields such as health, AI, entertainment, education, space exploration, disaster relief, and so on. I've only touched on a few here, but I shall likely write about more in the future. Nevertheless, I hope this basic introduction into spatial navigation and cognition has conveyed to you even a fraction of just how important and exciting the study of spatial navigation and cognition really is. If you'd like to continue learning more about this subject, I write new articles whenever I have enough spare time, the links to which can be found here.

In the next section, I shall be discussing some of the complexities behind spatial navigation, touching on perception, proprioception, episodic and semantic memory, and decision making. I'll also touch on the concept of a cognitive map, a key concept in understanding how we form our own understanding of our environments, and how we respond to changes around us.