Navigation in a “Virtual” Maze: Sex Differences and Correlation With Psychometric Measures of Spatial Ability in Humans

Moffat, Scott D.; Hampson, Elizabeth; Hatzipantelis, Maria

doi:10.1016/s1090-5138(97)00104-9

Cited by 410 publications

(302 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…A human analog of the Morris water task for measuring hippocampal processes has been developed, however, using virtual navigation through computer-generated environments. Many virtual navigation tasks, such as a virtual arena (Jacobs et al, 1998), a virtual reality town (Maguire et al, 1998), a virtual maze (Moffat et al, 1998), a virtual Morris water task (Astur et al, 1998a;Astur et al, 2002;Driscoll et al, 2003aDriscoll et al, , 2005Hamilton and Sutherland, 1999;Hamilton et al, 2002;Hamilton et al, 2003;Moffat and Resnick, 2002), and a Hebb-Williams maze (Shore et al, 2001) have been developed to facilitate the testing of human navigational processes in a laboratory setting.…”

Section: Virtual Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The aging hippocampus: A multi-level analysis in the rat

et al. 2006

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The purpose of the current thesis was twofold: (1) to examine various factors that might be contributing to age-related learning and memory deficits specifically related to the hippocampus, and (2) to validate our rat model of aging, employing a multilevel analysis. We found age-related deficits on both spatial and non-spatial hippocampus-dependent tasks that were accompanied by structural alterations observed both in vivo (volume, but not neuronal metabolic function) and post mortem (neuronal density and neurogenesis, but not synaptic or mitochondrial density). Furthermore, our results suggest that the observed hippocampal structural changes, namely decreased volume and neurogenesis, predict learning and memory deficits, and both can be accounted for by neurogenic reduction. In addition, the above-mentioned pattern of age-related deficits closely resembles that seen in humans, suggesting the present rat version of aging to be a very useful model for investigating hippocampal aging in humans.

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Section: Virtual Navigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The aging hippocampus: A multi-level analysis in the rat

et al. 2006

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“…Although care is required in generalising from the very small sample in this study (even though well-matched in age and IQ), the findings are consistent with gender differences found in larger studies. In contrast to mental rotation and spatial navigation which typically reveal an advantage for males over females (Astur, Ortiz, & Sutherland, 1998;Dabbs, Chang, Strong, & Milun, 1998;Moffatt, Hampson, & Hatzipantelis, 1998), females outperform males when asked to identify which object of a set of objects has been moved (McBurney, Gaulin, Devineni, & Adams, 1997;Silverman & Eals, 1992)-the basic paradigm used here. The exceptions to this female advantage in conditions subject and subject&cue-card perhaps indicates an advantage for men in using internal updating that is masked by the advantage for women when visual snapshots can be used.…”

Section: The Effect Of Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Orientational manoeuvres in the dark: dissociating allocentric and egocentric influences on spatial memory

2004

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Subjects in a darkroom saw an array of five phosphorescent objects on a circular table and, after a short delay, indicated which object had been moved. During the delay the subject, the table or a phosphorescent landmark external to the array was moved (a rotation about the centre of the table) either alone or together. The subject then had to indicate which one of the five objects had been moved. A fully factorial design was used to detect the use of three types of representations of object location: (i) visual snapshots; (ii) egocentric representations updated by self-motion; and (iii) representations relative to the external cue. Improved performance was seen whenever the test array was oriented consistently with any of these stored representations. The influence of representations (i) and (ii) replicates previous work. The influence of representation (iii) is a novel finding which implies that allocentric representations play a role in spatial memory, even over short distances and times. The effect of the external cue was greater when initially experienced as stable. Females out-performed males except when the array was consistent with self-motion but not visual snapshots. These results enable a simple egocentric model of spatial memory to be extended to address largescale navigation, including the effects of allocentric knowledge, landmark stability and gender. q

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“…Using a computer-generated "virtual maze," Moffat et al (1998) showed that human males learned a route through the maze quicker, and made fewer errors (e.g., hitting dead-ends in the maze), than females. In a similar vein, Astur et al (1998) employed a "virtual reality" version of the Morris water maze task in which human subjects were required to use spatial cues around the outside of a pool to navigate (or "swim") towards a hidden platform.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual orientation related differences in spatial memory

Rahman

Wilson

Abrahams

2003

J Int Neuropsychol Soc

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The purpose of this study was to investigate and extend previously reported sex differences in object location memory by comparing the performance of heterosexual and homosexual males and females. Subjects were 240 healthy, right-handed heterosexual and homosexual males and females. They were instructed to study 16 common, gender-neutral objects arranged randomly in an array and subsequently tested for object recall, object recognition and spatial location memory. Females recalled significantly more objects than males, although there were no group differences in object recognition. Decomposition of significant interactions between sex and sexual orientation on spatial location memory (controlling for differences in object recall, age and IQ) revealed that heterosexual females and homosexual males scored better than heterosexual males, and no different from each other. There were no differences between homosexual and heterosexual females. The findings suggest that homosexual males and heterosexual females encode, store and retrieve positional and relational information about spatial layouts similarly, pointing to within-sex variations in the neural architecture underlying spatial memory. (JINS, 2003, 9, 376-383.)

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Navigation in a “Virtual” Maze: Sex Differences and Correlation With Psychometric Measures of Spatial Ability in Humans

Cited by 410 publications

References 32 publications

The aging hippocampus: A multi-level analysis in the rat

The aging hippocampus: A multi-level analysis in the rat

Orientational manoeuvres in the dark: dissociating allocentric and egocentric influences on spatial memory

Sexual orientation related differences in spatial memory

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