Learning to recalibrate the role of dead reckoning and visual cues in spatial navigation

Abstract

In Experiment 1, hamsters started from their permanent home at the periphery of a circular arena and headed to a food source at the center. They then returned, fully laden with food, along a direct path to their home. On control trials, in which no manipulation takes place, visual cues outside the arena and dead reckoning (i.e., updated internal references generated during the outward journey to the food source) controlled the return journey. On experimental trials, the arena, with the hamster in its nest, was rotated by 90°, putting dead reckoning at variance with the distal visual environment. The animals were rewarded for going with dead reckoning. At first, they favored the distal cues, but later most of the subjects switched to using dead reckoning. Thus, hamsters are flexible enough to recalibrate the relative weight that they normally attribute to different sets of spatial cues. In Experiment 2, the reliance on dead reckoning was greatly enhanced when a cue card at the nest entrance was rotated along with the arena, pitting one proximal cue plus dead reckoning against distal cues. Hence, dead reckoning and external cues seem to reinforce each other through their mutual correlation.

Failure of Centrally Placed Objects to Control the Firing Fields of Hippocampal Place Cells

“…We also note that the rapidity with which rats learn to guide locomotor behavior using distant cues (Morris, 1981) is parallel to the immediacy and consistency with which the white cue card controls the angular position of firing fields. Similar demonstrations of the greater efficacy of distant cues relative to local cues or path integration information are provided by a large number of studies (Suzuki et al, 1980;Téroni et al, 1987;Etienne et al, 1993;Alyan and Jander, 1994).…”

Place cells, head direction cells, and the learning of landmark stability

“…For this rat, the cue control was so strong that it often overrode the rat's internal direction sense even when the rat was not disoriented and could presumably tell that the card was in a different location each session. These combined results indicate that, in many rats, it is difficult to overcome the prior learning effects regarding the perceived stability of the visual cue, similar to behavioral results in hamsters reported by Etienne et al (1993).…”

Environmental stability modulates the role of path integration in human navigation

“…Similar to observations of navigation in mammals (e.g., Etienne et al, 1993;Knierim et al, 1998;Shettleworth & Sutton, 2005;Whishaw & Tomie, 1997), apparently stable landmarks reset the orientation of the human path integrator, whereas detectably unstable landmarks precipitate a switch from landmark navigation to path integration.…”

“…Just as a stable environment temporarily suppressed the functions of path integration in Experiments 1 and 2, leading to reliance on landmark navigation, here a chronically unstable environment temporarily suppresses landmark navigation and leads to reliance on path integration. Previous research has also reported that humans and animals change from landmark navigation to path integration due to cue conflicts produced by large landmark shifts (Barry, Hayman, Burgess, & Jeffery, 2007;Etienne, Lambert, Reverdin, & Teroni, 1993;Shettleworth & Sutton, 2005;Whishaw & Tomie, 1997;Zhao & Warren, 2015; see also Ratliff & Newcombe, 2008). But in the present experiment there was no cue conflict during catch trials, for visual landmarks and path integration were congruent -yet landmarks were ignored in early catch trials nonetheless.…”