Human retrosplenial theta and alpha modulation in active spatial navigation

Abstract

Spatial navigation is a complex cognitive process based on multiple senses that are integrated and processed by a wide network of brain areas. Previous studies have revealed the retrosplenial complex (RSC) to be modulated in a task-related manner during navigation. However, these studies restricted participants' movement to stationary setups, which might have impacted heading computations due to the absence of vestibular and proprioceptive inputs. Here, we investigated neural dynamics of RSC in an active spatial navigation task where participants actively ambulated from one location to several other points while the position of a landmark and the starting location were updated. The results revealed theta power in the RSC to be pronounced during heading changes but not during translational movements, indicating that physical rotations induce human RSC theta activity. This finding provides a potential evidence of head-direction computation in RSC in healthy humans during active spatial navigation.

Evaluating the impacts of color, graphics, and architectural features on wayfinding in healthcare settings using EEG data and virtual response testing

“…Neural dynamics from ICs clustered in the this ROI were compared among conditions using event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) on the event trials. Oscillatory neural activity in the theta band in the occipital cortex has been associated with navigation in mobile experiments when participants integrated visual, vestibular, and proprioception cues to perform wayfinding tasks (Do et al, 2020). Occipital cortex alpha suppression has also been previously observed in spatial learning for maintaining orientation in both passive (Chiu et al, 2012;Gramann et al, 2010;Lin et al, 2015;Plank et al, 2010) and active navigation tasks (Ehinger et al, 2014).…”

“…These EEG analyses focused on occipital and parietal brain regions that in prior research have been strongly associated with wayfinding and environmental-positioning cognition (Dhindsa et al, 2014;Lin et al, 2015;Rounds et al, 2020;Djebbara et al, 2020;Do et al, 2020). Based on these prior findings, we interpret beta and theta-band desynchronization in parietal and occipital brain regions as a likely indicator of integration of information from the environment for wayfinding; with a more pronounced effect when both architectural and signage enhancement (Condition C) compared to solely color enhancement in signage (Condition B) (Figure 9).…”

Unraveling the Physiological Correlates of Mental Workload Variations in Tracking and Collision Prediction Tasks

“…A collision miss was considered to happen when the participant could not identify which pair of dots would collide and, hence, did not click on either of the dots before the collision. 2) EEG Preprocessing: EEG data were preprocessed using EEGLAB v2020.0 toolbox [33] in MATLAB R2019a (The Mathworks, Inc., Natick, MA, USA) and adapted from [34]. EEG data were down-sampled to 250 Hz, and a band-pass filter of 2-45 Hz was applied.…”

Retrosplenial Segregation Reflects the Navigation Load During Ambulatory Movement

“…All the preprocessing steps were performed in EEGLAB (version 14.2.0) [29], [30] (and adapted from Do, et al [31]). The EEG data were first bandpass filtered (1-100 Hz) and then downsampled to 250 Hz.…”