Familiarity expands space and contracts time

Jafarpour, Anna; Spiers, Hugo J.

doi:10.1002/hipo.22672

Cited by 31 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Beyond boundaries separating positions, our findings demonstrate that distance estimates can be influenced through the geometric arrangement of boundaries. The response profiles observed in the VR version of the task revealed a general tendency to overestimate distances between positions, consistent with previous studies reporting overestimations of navigated distances 58 and spatial scale in map drawings 59 . We used the distances estimated on a subjective scale in the desktop version of the task to reconstruct remembered positions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory

et al. 2019

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Environmental boundaries anchor cognitive maps that support memory. However, trapezoidal boundary geometry distorts the regular firing patterns of entorhinal grid cells proposedly providing a metric for cognitive maps. Here, we test the impact of trapezoidal boundary geometry on human spatial memory using immersive virtual reality. Consistent with reduced regularity of grid patterns in rodents and a grid-cell model based on the eigenvectors of the successor representation, human positional memory was degraded in a trapezoid compared to a square environment; an effect particularly pronounced in the trapezoid's narrow part. Congruent with spatial frequency changes of eigenvector grid patterns, distance estimates between remembered positions were persistently biased; revealing distorted memory maps that explained behavior better than the objective maps. Our findings demonstrate that environmental geometry affects human spatial memory similarly to rodent grid cell activity-thus strengthening the putative link between grid cells and behavior along with their cognitive functions beyond navigation.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory

et al. 2019

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“…Beyond boundaries separating positions, our findings demonstrate that distance estimates can be influenced through the geometric arrangement of boundaries. The response profiles observed in the VR version of the task revealed a general tendency to overestimate distances between positions, consistent with previous studies reporting overestimations of navigated distances (Brunec et al, 2017) and spatial scale in map drawings (Jafarpour and Spiers, 2017). We used the distances estimated on a subjective scale in the desktop version of the task to reconstruct remembered positions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory

Bellmund

Ruiter

Nau

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Environmental boundaries anchor cognitive maps that support memory. However, trapezoidal boundary geometry distorts the regular firing patterns of entorhinal grid cells proposedly providing a metric for cognitive maps. Here, we test the impact of trapezoidal boundary geometry on human spatial memory using immersive virtual reality. Consistent with reduced regularity of grid patterns in rodents and a grid-cell model based on the eigenvectors of the successor representation, human positional memory was degraded in a trapezoid compared to a square environment; an effect particularly pronounced in the trapezoid's narrow part. Congruent with spatial frequency changes of eigenvector grid patterns, distance estimates between remembered positions were persistently biased; revealing distorted memory maps that explained behavior better than the objective maps. Our findings demonstrate that environmental geometry affects human spatial memory similarly to rodent grid cell activity -thus strengthening the putative link between grid cells and behavior along with their cognitive functions beyond navigation.

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“…However, the question remains as to why the participants did rely on the traveled distance to infer travel time and not vice versa? Though a causal link between neuronal activity and the observed time‐space interaction at a perceptual level remains speculative at this stage, the interrelation between interval timing and spatial processing is consistent with the findings regarding spatially and temporally tuned neurons in the hippocampus (Eichenbaum, ; Ekstrom & Ranganath, ; Howard & Eichenbaum, ; Jafarpour & Spiers, ; Ranganath & Hsieh, ). For example, Kraus et al () reported that hippocampal cells in rats exhibit increased firing at specific moments within a repeated 16 s interval of running on a treadmill.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…In sum, stimuli comprised views of three different sized rooms, each presented for three different durations. Given that it was unclear whether spatial and temporal estimates might be affected by an environment's familiarity (Barry, Ginzberg, O'Keefe, & Burgess, ; Jafarpour & Spiers, ), the wall and ground textures were randomly varied to maintain the impression of constantly changing (i.e., novel) environments.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the (a)symmetry between the perception of time and space in large‐scale environments

2018

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Cross-dimensional interference between spatial and temporal processing is well documented in humans, but the direction of these interactions remains unclear. The theory of metaphoric structuring states that space is the dominant concept influencing time perception, whereas time has little effect upon the perception of space. In contrast, theories proposing a common neuronal mechanism representing magnitudes argue for a symmetric interaction between space and time perception. Here, we investigated space-time interactions in realistic, large-scale virtual environments. Our results demonstrate a symmetric relationship between the perception of temporal intervals in the supra-second range and room size (experiment 1), but an asymmetric relationship between the perception of travel time and traveled distance (experiment 2). While the perception of time was influenced by the size of virtual rooms and by the distance traveled within these rooms, time itself affected only the perception of room size, but had no influence on the perception of traveled distance. These results are discussed in the context of recent evidence from rodent studies suggesting that subsets of hippocampal place and entorhinal grid cells can simultaneously code for space and time, providing a potential neuronal basis for the interactions between these domains.

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Familiarity expands space and contracts time

Cited by 31 publications

References 37 publications

Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory

Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory

Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory

On the (a)symmetry between the perception of time and space in large‐scale environments

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