Brain network dynamics for navigational learning and memory

Effective spatial navigation is dependent on several cognitive processes including learning, attention, and memory, but how do people learn and remember new environments? Previous studies explored brain activity in already known environments, however, comparatively little is known about the acquisition of this knowledge. We analyzed fMRI of humans completing a challenging maze learning task. Participants were given 16 minutes to explore a virtual hedge maze and learn the locations of 9 objects. Next, their object location memory was tested in 48 ( <45 s) trials, each starting at one object with instructions to find another object (obscured for testing) using paths of the maze (e.g. clock to lamp). Accuracy ranged from near 0% to 100%, enabling us to quantify brain network and behavioral differences that distinguish between poor, average, and exceptional performers. We used dynamic community detection to identify brain network changes. Preliminary results suggest that the best navigators exhibit high flexibility throughout the brain, whereas average and poor navigators exhibit low flexibility only in the salience/ventral attention network. In addition, we examined behavioral exploration patterns in the learning phase to determine whether they correlate with navigation accuracy in the test phase, finding that better navigators tend to explore more evenly than poor navigators. Together, the brain and behavioral dynamics in this study provide rich insight into navigational learning and memory.