The human brain uses spatial schemas to represent segmented environments.

ABSTRACT: Humans and animals use cognitive maps to represent the spatial structure of the environment. Although these maps are typically conceptualized as extending in an equipotential manner across known space, psychological evidence suggests that people mentally segment complex environments into subspaces. To understand the neurocognitive mechanisms behind this operation, we familiarized participants with a virtual courtyard that was divided into two halves by a river; we then used behavioral testing and fMRI to understand how spatial locations were encoded within this environment. Participants' spatial judgments and multivoxel activation patterns were affected by the division of the courtyard, indicating that the presence of a boundary can induce mental segmentation even when all parts of the env

SUBMITTER: Peer M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8578397 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature