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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on June 2, 2006
Cerebral Cortex 2007 17(4):975-981; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhl008
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Neural Representation of Navigational Relevance Is Rapidly Induced and Long Lasting

Gabriele Janzen1,2, Barbara Wagensveld2 and Miranda van Turennout2,3

1 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 2 F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 3 Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Address correspondence to Gabriele Janzen, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Postbus 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Email: gabriele.janzen{at}mpi.nl.

Successful navigation is facilitated by the presence of landmarks. Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence indicated that the human parahippocampal gyrus automatically distinguishes between landmarks placed at navigationally relevant (decision points) and irrelevant locations (nondecision points). This storage of navigational relevance can provide a neural mechanism underlying successful navigation. However, an efficient wayfinding mechanism requires that important spatial information is learned quickly and maintained over time. The present study investigates whether the representation of navigational relevance is modulated by time and practice. Participants learned 2 film sequences through virtual mazes containing objects at decision and at nondecision points. One maze was shown one time, and the other maze was shown 3 times. Twenty-four hours after study, event-related fMRI data were acquired during recognition of the objects. The results showed that activity in the parahippocampal gyrus was increased for objects previously placed at decision points as compared with objects placed at nondecision points. The decision point effect was not modulated by the number of exposures to the mazes and independent of explicit memory functions. These findings suggest a persistent representation of navigationally relevant information, which is stable after only one exposure to an environment. These rapidly induced and long-lasting changes in object representation provide a basis for successful wayfinding.

Key Words: fMRI • human navigation • learning and memory • memory formation • parahippocampal gyrus


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