Congratulations to Rosana Sabur for being the 2024 recipient of the Jame Tait Goodrich Award for Excellence in Neurobiology in Honor of James McGaugh! This award, established to recognize exceptional achievement in neurobiology research, honors two outstanding undergraduates completing their 3rd year. Well-deserved, Rosana!

Our lab uses Virtual Reality (VR) to specifically test spatial navigation abilities in controlled and novel environments. Navigating through virtual environments allows us as researchers to balance experimental control with ecological validity, resulting in meaningful data that can reflect real-world behavior and actions. VR enables us to create temporally extended tasks, examine reactions and effects contingent on behavior, and access different data types/avatars. These applications extend beyond spatial navigation research and can serve as valuable tools in designing experimental tasks.

Members of the Spatial Neuroscience Lab recently hosted an in-person workshop for approximately 15 attendees from interdisciplinary fields such as Engineering and Computer Science. The workshop covered VR uses and applications, provided an introduction to the Unity Game Engine, guided participants in creating an interactive obstacle course in Unity, examined a framework for designing experimental tasks (Landmarks), and culminated in the creation of a simple task using Landmarks. Attendees enjoyed the workshop and left with new knowledge about how they might incorporate Unity and VR into their research.

We extend our thanks to the presenters (Liz C., Vaisakh P., Mike S.A., Tiffany R., Taylor L., Jingjing W., Daisy V., Ying W.) for organizing and planning the event. We look forward to hosting a similar event next year!

VR Resources & Materials in this Google Drive Link

Erica Ward will be beginning her 10-week DHS-WIRED Internship Program at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the summer of 2024. She will be involved on projects involving Concept and Application Evaluation (i.e., using physics, mathematics, statistics, and quantitative evaluation and assessment) and Analytics (i.e., political science, public policy and international relations, criminal justice, and policy analysis). Alongside her engaging research internship opportunities, she will be involved in professional development opportunities and networking to further her STEM career.

Find out more information about her internship here.

Congrats, Erica!

Dr. Vaisakh Puthusseryppady’s and Daniela Cossio’s commentary highlighting the importance and implications of Zheng et al.’s finding about the hippocampal subregion CA1 as it relates to the spatial decline in older adults was recently published in PNAS!

Zheng et al. found that the neural mechanisms underlying spatial memory involve both age-related and age-invariant factors. Altered signal input into the hippocampal CA1 region was associated with age, but the fidelity of neural activation patterns in CA1 was not – both young and older adults with greater signal fidelity had better spatial discrimination. This suggests strategies to improve spatial memory ability could benefit those at risk for Alzheimer’s, as the disease pathology affects brain regions critical for spatial navigation. Vaisakh and Daniela also suggest that future studies may focus on training individuals to identify unique environmental features could strengthen pathways for better spatial memory, as individuals with superior spatial memory are better at differentiating between environments regardless of age.

Puthusseryppady, V., Cossio, D., & Chrastil, E.R. (2024). Spatial memory and hippocampal remapping: Who will age well? Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 121(3), e2319952121

Puthusseryppady, V., Cossio, D., & Chrastil, E.R. (2024)

You (Lily) Cheng’s paper titled “(Don’t) Look Where You Are Going: Evidence for a Travel Direction Signal in Humans That Is Independent of Head Direction” was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General! Here, she challenges the common assumption that these two factors are redundant, arguing that they provide different spatial information. The study uses a novel motion adaptation paradigm from visual neuroscience, designed to isolate the effect of travel direction from head direction. The results show high-level aftereffects of perceived travel direction, suggesting that travel direction is a crucial component of human navigation. Interestingly, the study found a higher frequency of reporting perceived travel toward the adapted direction, an aftereffect that contradicts low-level motion aftereffects. This effect persisted even after controlling for potential response biases and approaching effects, and it increased with the duration of adaptation. These findings provide the first evidence of how a pure travel direction signal might be represented in humans, independently of head direction!

Cheng, Y., Ling, S., Stern, C.E., Huang, A. & Chrastil, E.R. (2024). (Don’t) look where you are going: Evidence for a travel direction signal in humans that is independent of head direction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(4), 1038-1052.

Cheng, Y., Ling, S., Stern, C.E., Huang, A. & Chrastil, E.R.(2024)

Liz Chrastil presented at the fourth NIH Cognitive Aging Summit held on March 20th, 2024! Here, she discussed our lab’s findings with regards to Human spatial navigation during midlife: Sex differences in behavior and circuitry, and addressed the following questions:

1. How do navigation abilities change during early aging?
2. Do the circuits that are associated with navigation change as we age?
3. How do sex differences in navigation change during the course of aging?
4. Do any changes in navigation ability relate to the menopausal transition?
5. Can we use navigation as a tool to determine risk for dementia, especially for women?

Overall, the NIH Cognitive Aging Summit gathered scientific presentations and discussion of age-related brain and cognitive change, with a particular focus on individual differences and the development of personalized approaches to the remediation of decline and the maintenance of health.

We would like to congratulate Vaisakh Puthusseryppady for being offered, and accepting an assistant professorship at Tilburg University in the School of Social & Behavioral Sciences! Starting in September 2024 as a Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Vaisakh plans on developing a research program specifically looking at the early identification of Alzheimer’s disease using spatial navigation as a behavioral biomarker, as well as developing cognitive training interventions to improve navigation ability in the aging population.

Vaisakh has been studying aspects of Alzheimer’s disease identification and navigation ability in the midlife-older populations since starting his postdoctoral position here in the Spatial Neuroscience Lab in 2021.

We’re excited to see his future findings and wish him the best at Tilburg University in the fall!

This year, several of our lab members presented their research at Neuroscience 2023, hosted by SfN, and the 2023 Annual Psychonomic Society (Psychonomics) Meeting. Congratulations to all of our presenters, and congratulations to Liz for being a recipient of the Early Career Awards at Psychonomics!

Talks:

• (Psychonomics) Liz Chrastil – Individual Differences in Human Navigation Ability: Interactions with Brain Structure and Function

Posters

• (Psychonomics) Alina Tu – Evaluating Consistency in Path Integration Measures: Triangle Completion and Loop Closure
• (Psychonomics) Luke Chi – Labeled Graphs in Navigation Behavior and Route Choice.
• (Psychonomics) Marjan Rashidi – The Role of Chronic Stress in Spatial Navigation in Humans
• (SfN) Daniela Cossio – White Matter Integrity is Associated with Navigation and Differs by Menopause Stage During Midlife
• (SfN) Erica Ward – Brain Network Connectivity and Dynamics of Navigational Learning and Memory
• (SfN) Mike Starrett-Ambrose – Brain networks supporting egocentric and allocentric relational processing
• (SfN) Nikhita Kaushik – The Southern California Youth Neuroscience Association (SCYNA) as a model for engaging high school students in neuroscience

The Institutional National Research Service Award (T32) is a training grant for predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees to prepare for careers with significant impact in health-related research. Daniela was recently awarded this grant for the Training in the Neurobiology of Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease program specifically, which, according to their grant description online, involves the “preparation and instruction in the application of molecular and quantitative approaches to the elucidation of the cellular and molecular mechanisms of age-related neurodegeneration, brain plasticity, and learning and memory.” The training program will involve an extensive curriculum, close mentorship, and collaborative learning. Congrats, Daniela!