Visually navigating on foot uses unique brain region
Using vision to efficiently move through an area by foot uses a unique region of the brain’s cortex, according to a small study funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI). The region, called the occipital place area (OPA), fails to activate during other modes of moving, such as crawling. The finding may help explain developmental milestones as children learn to interact with and navigate their near environments. The study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.
Navigating through a physical environment – anything from a small room to a city -- requires the brain to process several classes of information. Each class of information is processed in its own region of the brain’s cortex, which then work together to support navigation behavior, such as walking. Loss of any one of these regions can affect how or whether someone can successfully navigate.
Two main areas of the cortex are activated as people navigate through an environment: the OPA and the retrosplenial complex (RSC). Daniel Dilks, Ph.D., Emory University, Atlanta, theorizes that each of these areas supports a different kind of navigation. The RSC supports map-based navigation, which involves finding our way from a specific place to some distant, out-of-sight place (for example, finding our way from your house to your favorite restaurant). By contrast, he believes the OPA supports visually guided navigation, which involves finding our way through near environment, avoiding boundaries and obstacles (for example, moving through your kitchen without bumping into things).
