An intrinsic association between olfactory identification and spatial memory in humans

Dahmani, Louisa; Patel, Raihaan; Yang, Yiling; Chakravarty, M. Mallar; Fellows, Lesley K.; Bohbot, Véronique D.

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06569-4

Cited by 71 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 63 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is also possible that the over-engagement of the stimulus-response learning system, through the use of GPS, exerts negative effects on spatial memory due to the competitive nature of the two systems. Several studies have shown, for example, that lesioning the hippocampus or other structures that are part of the neural circuit mediating spatial memory results in impaired spatial memory but facilitates stimulus-response learning 15,18,25,49 . Repeatedly and habitually tapping into the stimulus-response learning system may likewise hinder spatial memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our tasks allow us to measure several facets of navigation, including the extent of navigation strategy use (people can use the same strategy but rely on it to different extents), learning (how quickly people learn about a new environment), cognitive mapping, landmark encoding and reliance, and flexibility/rigidity. The spatial memory and stimulus-response strategies are distinct as they rely on separate neural networks and demonstrate a double dissociation, in that lesioning the spatial memory neural circuit impairs spatial memory but spares stimulus-response learning, while lesioning the stimulus-response neural circuit impairs stimulus-response learning but spares spatial memory 11,15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . Thus, navigation is a broad process that includes two distinct methods: spatial learning and memory and stimulus-response learning and memory.…”

Section: Habitual Use Of Gps Negatively Impacts Spatial Memory Duringmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation

Dahmani

Bohbot

2020

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

study, we sought to determine whether individuals with greater GPS habits rely more on stimulus-response strategies and less on spatial memory strategies when they are required to navigate without GPS, and whether they have poorer cognitive mapping abilities and landmark encoding. We then performed a three-year follow-up in which we retested a small subset of participants. This longitudinal session served to investigate whether GPS use has a negative impact on the various spatial memory facets over time. Methods participants. Sixty healthy young adults between the ages of 19 and 35 participated in the cross-sectional study. Participants were required to be right-handed and to have no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders, or of alcohol or drug abuse. Additionally, they had to have no history of head trauma followed by a loss of consciousness. At the time of recruitment, participants had to be local regular drivers, defined as driving at least 4 days a week in Montreal, Canada. We had no requirements for GPS use, as the majority of participants used GPS at least once a week. To reduce the potential influence of outliers, we excluded individuals with values three standard deviations away from the mean. We chose this conservative threshold as our sample was comprised of healthy young adults. One outlier was found in terms of lifetime GPS experience. No outliers were found in terms of the other GPS habits we measured, i.e. hours of GPS use since pre-test, sense of GPS dependence, or GPS reliance (see Questionnaires section). Of the 60 individuals who participated, ten were excluded: six were not regular drivers, two were not motivated and did not learn or complete the tasks, one was ambidextrous, and one was an outlier in terms of lifetime GPS experience. Fifty participants were included in the cross-sectional study (18 women, 32 men; mean age: 27.6 ± 4.5 years old; see Table 1 for demographic information). All 50 participants were invited for a long-term follow-up session. This session was unplanned and therefore participants had not initially agreed to return for a follow-up. Given that the sample was primarily undergraduate students, many participants were unreachable or had moved away from the city three years after initial testing, and therefore a small subset of 13 participants (4 women, 9 men; mean age: 28.46 ± 3.93 years old; Table 1) came back for a follow-up assessment (mean delay between pre-and post-testing = 3.23 ± 0.50 years). Men and women did not differ on any of the GPS measures. One participant in the cross-sectional study did not do the CSDLT due to lack of time. At baseline, the longitudinal sample did not differ from the remaining participants in the cross-sectional sample in terms of demographics, GPS variables, SBSOD, or navigation variables (independent samples t-tests: all Bootstrap BCa 95% CI crossed 0; Chi-square test for difference in proportion of men and women: p > 0.05). The Institutional Review Board of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute approved the study and al...

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Habitual Use Of Gps Negatively Impacts Spatial Memory Duringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation

Dahmani

Bohbot

2020

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, research on human olfaction has rarely been addressed in spatial cognition research. A few exceptions are the studies by Dahmani et al (2018) showing that olfactory identification covaries with spatial memory on the behavioral and neural level. Jacobs, Arter, Cook, and Sulloway (2015) demonstrated that humans are capable of returning to a previously learned spatial location based on an olfactory cue.…”

Section: Olfactory Cues In Landmark-based Wayfindingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Landmark‐based wayfinding with odors has repeatedly been demonstrated in the animal kingdom, mainly for species such as desert ants (e.g., Steck, ; Steck, Hansson, & Knaden, , ) and rats (e.g., Rossier & Schenk, ). For humans it has recently been proposed that—besides the classical functions of the olfactory system (e.g., Stevenson & Attuquayefio, )—olfaction developed to aid spatial orientation and navigation (Dahmani et al, ). This approach has been termed the olfactory spatial hypothesis (Jacobs, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Odors Can Serve as Landmarks in Human Wayfinding

Hamburger

Knauff

2019

Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scientists have shown that many non‐human animals such as ants, dogs, or rats are very good at using smells to find their way through their environments. But are humans also capable of navigating through their environment based on olfactory cues? There is not much research on this topic, a gap that the present research seeks to bridge. We here provide one of the first empirical studies investigating the possibility of using olfactory cues as landmarks in human wayfinding. Forty subjects participated in a piloting study to determine the olfactory material for the main experiment. Then, 24 subjects completed a wayfinding experiment with 12 odors as orientation cues. Our results are astonishing: Participants were rather good at what we call “odor‐based wayfinding.” This indicates that the ability of humans to use olfactory cues for navigation is often underestimated. We discuss two different cognitive explanations and rule out the idea that our results are just an instance of sequential learning. Rather, we argue that humans can enrich their cognitive map of the environment with olfactory landmarks and may use them for wayfinding.

show abstract

“…Finding novel resources is key to animals foraging in dynamic environments, such as tropical rainforests. Individuals can improve the localization of new resources via specialized behaviours, such as specific movement or search strategies (Humphries et al 2012) or increased sensitivity to certain environmental cues (Dahmani et al 2018). Such strategies might differ between the sexes (Croft et al 2003a), but are unlikely to explain our findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Females facilitate male patch discovery in a wild fish population

Snijders

Kurvers

Krause

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When individuals are more socially responsive to one sex than the other, the benefits they get from foraging socially are likely to depend on the sex composition of the social environment. We tested this hypothesis by performing experimental manipulations of guppy, Poecilia reticulata, sex compositions in the wild. Males found fewer novel food patches in the absence of females than in mixed-sex compositions, while female patch discovery did not differ between compositions. We argue that these results were driven by sex-dependent mechanisms of social association: Markov chain-based fission-fusion modeling revealed that males reduced sociality when females were absent, while less social individuals found fewer patches. Females were similarly social with or without males. Finally, males, but not females, preferred to join females over males at patches. Our findings reveal the relevance of considering how individual and population-level traits interact in shaping the adaptive value of social living in the wild.

show abstract

An intrinsic association between olfactory identification and spatial memory in humans

Cited by 71 publications

References 63 publications

Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation

Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation

Odors Can Serve as Landmarks in Human Wayfinding

Females facilitate male patch discovery in a wild fish population

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About