Application of Virtual Reality in Spatial Memory.

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has become a widely used tool with a plethora of applications in neuroscience [...].

Reversal Training Discloses Gender Differences in a Spatial Memory Task in Humans.

Over the past few years, spatial memory has been studied using virtual-reality-based tasks. Reversal learning has been widely used in spatial orientation tasks for testing, among other things, new learning and flexibility. By means of a reversal-learning protocol, we assessed spatial memory in men and women. A total of sixty participants (half of them women) performed a task that included two phases: during the acquisition phase, participants were asked to find one or three rewarded positions in the virtual room across ten trials. During the reversal phase, the rewarded boxes were moved to a new position and maintained for four trials. The results showed that men and women differed in the reversal phase, with men outperforming women in high demanding conditions. Dissimilarities in several cognitive abilities between both genders are the base of these differences and are discussed.

Clockwise rotation of perspective view improves spatial recognition of complex environments in aging.

Deciphering the human spatial cognition system involves the development of simple tasks to assess how our brain works with shapes and forms. Prior studies in the mental rotation field disclosed a clockwise rotation bias on how basic stimuli are perceived and processed. However, there is a lack of a substantial scientific background for complex stimuli and how factors like sex or aging could influence them. Regarding the latter point, it is well known that our spatial skills tend to decline as we grow older. Hence, the hippocampal system is especially sensitive to aging. These neural changes underlie difficulties for the elderly in landmark orientation or mental rotation tasks. Thus, our study aimed to check whether the effect of clockwise and anticlockwise rotations in the spatial recognition of complex environments could be modulated by aging. To do so, 40 young adults and 40 old adults performed the ASMRT, a virtual spatial memory recognition test. Results showed that young adults outperformed old adults in all difficulty conditions (i.e., encoding one or three boxes positions). In addition, old adults were affected more than young adults by rotation direction, showing better performance in clockwise rotations. In conclusion, our study provides evidence that aging is particularly affected by the direction of rotation. We suggest that clockwise bias could be linked with the cognitive decline associated with aging. Future studies could address this with brain imaging measures.

Pre-pandemic Psychobiological Features Predict Impact of COVID-19 Confinement on Loneliness.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to various government-imposed limitations on social interaction and strict home confinement. Such involuntary social-distancing policies can exacerbate feelings of loneliness and alter emotional well-being. Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis is a potential mechanism for loneliness' deleterious health effects. In this study, we explored whether pre-pandemic diurnal cortisol output (AUC G ), a measure of HPA axis function, may predict the propensity to changes in loneliness during long-term COVID-19 home confinement and if extraversion would moderate this relationship. This association has been explored by analysing the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and strict home confinement on social and emotional loneliness in 45 Spanish young adults. Diurnal cortisol levels were measured from five saliva samples obtained across a day just before the pandemic, and data about participants' perceived loneliness, empathic state, extraversion, and prospective volunteering were obtained both before and during the confinement. Participants' social and family loneliness increased during long-term strict home confinement, while prospective volunteering tendencies and extraversion decreased. Importantly, after adjusting for relevant confounders, moderation analyses revealed that in young adults with high pre-pandemic extraversion, a higher AUC G predicted a larger increase in social loneliness during confinement, while in individuals with low extraversion, AUC G was negatively related to change in loneliness. Our findings highlight the utility of pre-pandemic diurnal cortisol output in predicting the social impact of COVID-19 home confinement, presenting this hormone as a potential biomarker for a priori identification of at-risk groups during public health crises.

Spatial Recognition Memory: Differential Brain Strategic Activation According to Sex.

Human spatial memory research has significantly progressed since the development of computerized tasks, with many studies examining sex-related performances. However, few studies explore the underlying electrophysiological correlates according to sex. In this study event-related potentials were compared between male and female participants during the performance of an allocentric spatial recognition task. Twenty-nine university students took part in the research. Results showed that while general performance was similar in both sexes, the brain of males and females displayed a differential activation. Males showed increased N200 modulation than females in the three phases of memory process (encoding, maintenance, and retrieval). Meanwhile females showed increased activation of P300 in the three phases of memory process compared to males. In addition, females exhibited more negative slow wave (NSW) activity during the encoding phase. These differences are discussed in terms of attentional control and the allocation of attentional resources during spatial processing. Our findings demonstrate that sex modulates the resources recruited to performed this spatial task.

Sex Differences in Spatial Memory: Comparison of Three Tasks Using the Same Virtual Context.

Spatial memory has been studied through different instruments and tools with different modalities of administration. The cognitive load varies depending on the measure used and it should be taken into account to correctly interpret results. The aim of this research was to analyze how men and women perform three different spatial memory tasks with the same spatial context but with different cognitive demands. A total of 287 undergraduate students from the University of Almeria (Spain) and the University of L'Aquila (Italy) participated in the study. They were divided into three groups balanced by sex according to the spatial memory test they performed: the Walking Space Boxes Room Task (WSBRT), the Almeria Spatial Memory Recognition Test (ASMRT) and the Non-Walking Space Boxes Room Task (NWSBRT). Time spent and number of errors/correct answers were registered for analysis. In relation to the WSBRT and the ASMRT, men were faster and reached the optimal level of performance before women. In the three tests, familiarity with the spatial context helped to reduce the number of errors, regardless of the level of difficulty. In conclusion, sex differences were determined by the familiarity with the spatial context, the difficulty level of the task, the active or passive role of the participant and the amount of visual information provided in each screen shot.

Differential Susceptibility to the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Working Memory, Empathy, and Perceived Stress: The Role of Cortisol and Resilience.

There are important individual differences in adaptation and reactivity to stressful challenges. Being subjected to strict social confinement is a distressful psychological experience leading to reduced emotional well-being, but it is not known how it can affect the cognitive and empathic tendencies of different individuals. Cortisol, a key glucocorticoid in humans, is a strong modulator of brain function, behavior, and cognition, and the diurnal cortisol rhythm has been postulated to interact with environmental stressors to predict stress adaptation. The present study investigates in 45 young adults (21.09 years old, SD = 6.42) whether pre-pandemic diurnal cortisol indices, overall diurnal cortisol secretion (AUCg) and cortisol awakening response (CAR) can predict individuals' differential susceptibility to the impact of strict social confinement during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on working memory, empathy, and perceived stress. We observed that, following long-term home confinement, there was an increase in subjects' perceived stress and cognitive empathy scores, as well as an improvement in visuospatial working memory. Moreover, during confinement, resilient coping moderated the relationship between perceived stress scores and pre-pandemic AUCg and CAR. In addition, in mediation models, we observed a direct effect of AUCg and an indirect effect of both CAR and AUCg, on change in perceived self-efficacy. These effects were parallelly mediated by the increase in working memory span and cognitive empathy. In summary, our findings reveal the role of the diurnal pattern of cortisol in predicting the emotional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting a potential biomarker for the identification of at-risk groups following public health crises.

Spatial skills.

Spatial skills represent an important part of our cognitive processes and have been widely studied in the last decades. The term "spatial skills" includes several abilities, some of them clearly sexually dimorphic. Thus men usually perform better than women in mental rotation and spatial orientation tasks, whereas women outperform men in object location memory tests. Skills like visualization and perception could account for these differences, but they could also be modulated by the cognitive style. Obviously, disease can interfere in certain brain structures underlying learning and memory, thus altering spatial abilities in both genders. In this chapter, spatial skills and sexual dimorphism are briefly reviewed, focusing on processes underlying performance as well as models used to explain how we perceive information from the environment. The chapter also includes references to the brain, providing some cues regarding the anatomic regions underlying some of these behaviors.

Allocentric Spatial Memory Performance in a Virtual Reality-Based Task is Conditioned by Visuospatial Working Memory Capacity.

Traditionally, the medial temporal lobe has been considered a key brain region for spatial memory. Nevertheless, executive functions, such as working memory, also play an important role in complex behaviors, such as spatial navigation. Thus, the main goal of this study is to clarify the relationship between working memory capacity and spatial memory performance. Spatial memory was assessed using a virtual reality-based procedure, the Boxes Room task, and the visual working memory with the computer-based Change Localization Task. One hundred and twenty-three (n = 123) participants took part in this study. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) revealed a statistically significant relationship between working memory capacity and spatial abilities. Thereafter, two subgroups n = 60, were formed according to their performance in the working memory task (1st and 4th quartiles, n = 30 each). Results demonstrate that participants with high working memory capacity committed fewer mistakes in the spatial task compared to the low working memory capacity group. Both groups improved their performance through repeated trials of the spatial task, thus showing that they could learn spatial layouts independent of their working memory capacity. In conclusion, these findings support that spatial memory performance is directly related to working memory skills. This could be relevant for spatial memory assessment in brain lesioned patients.

Shall We Dance? Dancing Modulates Executive Functions and Spatial Memory.

BACKGROUND: Aging is generally considered to be related to physical and cognitive decline. This is especially prominent in the frontal and parietal lobes, underlying executive functions and spatial memory, respectively. This process could be successfully mitigated in certain ways, such as through the practice of aerobic sports. With regard to this, dancing integrates physical exercise with music and involves retrieval of complex sequences of steps and movements creating choreographies. METHODS: In this study, we compared 26 non-professional salsa dancers (mean age 55.3 years, age-range 49-70 years) with 20 non-dancers (mean age 57.6 years, age-range 49-70 years) by assessing two variables: their executive functions and spatial memory performance. RESULTS: results showed that dancers scored better that non-dancers in our tests, outperforming controls in executive functions-related tasks. Groups did not differ in spatial memory performance. CONCLUSIONS: This work suggests that dancing can be a valid way of slowing down the natural age-related cognitive decline. A major limitation of this study is the lack of fitness assessment in both groups. In addition, since dancing combines multiple factors like social contact, aerobic exercise, cognitive work with rhythms, and music, it is difficult to determine the weight of each variable.

Age-related differences in the elderly in a spatial recognition task.

Spatial memory is a cognitive ability which declines with ageing thus showing changes in some process such as the use of allocentric strategies. These age-related changes in spatial orientation suggest that this skill could be an adequate marker of cognitive decline. Many tasks used in investigation to assess spatial memory demand a participant's active role, which involves that the navigational experience is different for everyone. In this study, the Almeria Spatial Memory Recognition Test (ASMRT), a test based on a recognition paradigm, was used to offer the same experience with the environment. The aim of this research was to determine if the ASMRT is suitable to be applied in the elderly and detect spatial memory differences as one age. The ASMRT and other neuropsychological tests were applied in a sample aged between 50and 79 years. Results revealed a decrease in the ASMRT performance by the older group. No gender differences were found. Performance in attention and visuospatial working memory tests revealed some correlations with the ASMRT performance. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that 70-79-year-old participants clearly show age-related changes in spatial memory. Thanks to its simplicity the ASMRT could be used as a screening test in medical practice.

Ten years younger: Practice of chronic aerobic exercise improves attention and spatial memory functions in ageing.

Aerobic exercise is associated with changes in brain morphology and improvement of cognitive functions. Physical activity may be especially important after age 60 when cognitive decline is more pronounced. In this paper, the effect of chronic practice of aerobic sports was studied in old adults by assessing their executive and mnesic functions, supported by frontal and temporal brain structures. Two groups were formed according to their age (60-69 and 70-79 years-old) including sportsmen (n = 23) and sedentary men (n = 24). Spatial memory and efficiency of attentional networks were measured, as well as general intelligence. Results showed that sportsmen outperformed sedentary participants in many of the tests employed. Thus their alerting, orienting and executive networks worked more effectively in the ANT-I task for executive functions, and they were more accurate in the spatial memory task, displaying a better spatial orientation. Scores in other neuropsychological tasks followed the same tendency. These data support the protective effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive functions.

Virtual reality assessment of walking and non-walking space in men and women with virtual reality-based tasks.

Far space and near space refer to different spatial features in which we unfold our behaviour. On the one hand, classical visuospatial neuropsychological tests assess spatial abilities in the near space; on the other, far space typically involves new spatial memory tasks in which participants display their behaviour in an environment, either interacting with objects or searching for targets. The Boxes Room Task is a virtual test that assesses spatial memory in the far space. Based upon this task, a new test was developed in which participants could not move about within the context, but they could actually perceive it from a specific viewpoint. In this work, both versions of the task were compared with one another. Furthermore, they were also compared with the results of 10/36 spatial recall test, a task assessing spatial memory in the near space. Two conditions were applied in all tasks, both in stable and rotated contexts. Our study included one hundred and twenty healthy young participants who were divided into two groups. The first group performed the Walking Space Boxes Room Task. A second group performed the Non-Walking Space Boxes Room Task as well as another traditional neuropsychological test for near space assessment, the 10/36 spatial recall test. Results proved that orientation in the non-walking space was more difficult than in the walking space. Additionally, our test also showed that men outperformed women in both virtual reality-based tasks, although they did not do it in the traditional 10/36 spatial recall test. In short, this work exposes that virtual-reality technologies provide tools to assess spatial memory, being more sensitive than traditional tests in the detection of small performance changes.

Walking and non-walking space in an equivalent virtual reality task: Sexual dimorphism and aging decline of spatial abilities.

Spatial memory enables us to locate places and objects in space, to determine our position and manage spatial relationships in our environment. Our operations are displayed in a space that sometimes is inaccessible. In this case, the impossibility of movement within the context forces individuals to rely on the information gathered from limited viewpoints. This study investigates the use of walking and non-walking spaces using two equivalent virtual reality tasks in which displacement is only permitted in one of them. One hundred and fifty participants were divided into three age groups: 50-59, 60-69 and 70-79 year-old subjects. The starting position changed pseudo-randomly and two difficulty levels were set, with one and three positions to be found. Results provided evidence for 70-79 year-old people impairment of their spatial abilities compared with 50-59 and 60-69 year-old groups. In both difficulty conditions, participants made more errors in the non-walking space than in the walking space. All participants showed an improvement in the last trials of the task. Moreover, sexual dimorphism was registered in the high level of difficulty, in which men outperformed women. This study supports the idea that aging impairs the organization of spatial representations of the environment, and that this aspect is more noticeable in conditions where displacement is limited.

Almeria spatial memory recognition test (ASMRT): Gender differences emerged in a new passive spatial task.

Many different human spatial memory tasks were developed in the last two decades. Virtual reality based tasks make possible developing different scenarios and situations to assess spatial orientation but sometimes these tasks are complex for specific populations like children and older-adults. A new spatial task with a very limited technological requirement was developed in this study. It demanded the use of spatial memory for an accurate solution. It also proved to be sensitive to gender differences, with men outperforming women under high specific difficulty levels. Thanks to its simplicity it could be applied as a screening test and is easy to combine with EEG and fMRI studies.

Age and gender-related differences in a spatial memory task in humans.

Cognitive skills decline with age. Our ability to keep oriented in our surrounding environment was demonstrated to be influenced by factors like age and gender. Introduction of virtual reality based tasks improved assessment of spatial memory in humans. In this study, spatial orientation was assessed in a virtual memory task in order to determine the effect of aging and gender on navigational skills. Subjects from 45 to 74 years of age were organized in three groups (45-54, 55-64, 65-74 years old). Two levels of difficulty were considered. Results showed that males outperformed females in 65-74 years-old group. In addition to this, females showed a more noticeable poor performance in spatial memory than males, since memory differences appeared between all age groups. On the other hand, 65-74 year-old males showed an impaired performance in comparison with 45-54 year-old group. These results support that spatial memory becomes less accurate as we age and gender is an important factor influencing spatial orientation skills.

Practice of aerobic sports is associated with better spatial memory in adults and older men.

UNLABELLED: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Cognitive abilities experience diverse age-related changes. Memory complaints are common in aging. The practice of sports is known to benefit brain functioning, improving memory among other abilities. Introduction of virtual reality tasks makes it possible to easily assess cognitive functions such as spatial memory, a hippocampus-dependent cognitive ability. METHODS: In this study, the authors applied a virtual reality-based task to study spatial reference memory in two groups of men, sportsmen (n=28) and sedentary (n=28), across three different age groups: 50-59, 60-69, and 70-77 years. RESULTS: The data showed that sportsmen outperformed sedentary participants. In addition, there was also a significant effect of the factor age. Hence, older men (70-77 years old) displayed a poorer performance in comparison with the other age groups. CONCLUSIONS: These results support the beneficial effect of habitual physical activity in spatial memory.

Spatial memory alterations in children with epilepsy of genetic origin or unknown cause.

Genetic generalised epilepsy or epilepsy of unknown cause can remit before adolescence. In many children, the disease does not interfere with their academic achievement. Although there are neuropsychological studies characterising the cognitive profile, there are no studies in this population focused on spatial orientation abilities. In this study, we compared children with genetic generalised epilepsy or epilepsy of unknown cause with a control group using a virtual spatial learning task. Children with epilepsy showed worse performance on the spatial orientation task, although their visuo-spatial memory, attention, and working memory were normal. These results confirm that genetic generalised epilepsy or epilepsy of unknown cause is associated with more cognitive deficits. Virtual reality technologies can complement clinical assessment.

Developmental gender differences in children in a virtual spatial memory task.

OBJECTIVE: Behavioral achievements are the product of brain maturation. During postnatal development, the medial temporal lobe completes its maturation, and children acquire new memory abilities. In recent years, virtual reality-based tasks have been introduced in the neuropsychology field to assess different cognitive functions. In this work, desktop virtual reality tasks are combined with classic psychometric tests to assess spatial abilities in 4- to 10-year-old children. METHOD: Fifty boys and 50 girls 4-10-years of age participated in this study. Spatial reference memory and spatial working memory were assessed using a desktop virtual reality-based task. Other classic psychometric tests were also included in this work (e.g., the Corsi Block Tapping Test, digit tests, 10/36 Spatial Recall Test). RESULTS: In general terms, 4- and 5-year-old groups showed poorer performance than the older groups. However, 5-year-old children showed basic spatial navigation abilities with little difficulty. In addition, boys outperformed girls from the 6-8-year-old groups. Gender differences only emerged in the reference-memory version of the spatial task, whereas both sexes displayed similar performances in the working-memory version. CONCLUSION: There was general improvement in the performance of different tasks in children older than 5 years. However, results also suggest that brain regions involved in allocentric memory are functional even at the age of 5. In addition, the brain structures underlying reference memory mature later in girls than those required for the working memory.

Hippocampal inactivation with TTX impairs long-term spatial memory retrieval and modifies brain metabolic activity.

Functional inactivation techniques enable studying the hippocampal involvement in each phase of spatial memory formation in the rat. In this study, we applied tetrodotoxin unilaterally or bilaterally into the dorsal hippocampus to evaluate the role of this brain structure in retrieval of memories acquired 28 days before in the Morris water maze. We combined hippocampal inactivation with the assessment of brain metabolism using cytochrome oxidase histochemistry. Several brain regions were considered, including the hippocampus and other related structures. Results showed that both unilateral and bilateral hippocampal inactivation impaired spatial memory retrieval. Hence, whereas subjects with bilateral hippocampal inactivation showed a circular swim pattern at the side walls of the pool, unilateral inactivation favoured swimming in the quadrants adjacent to the target one. Analysis of cytochrome oxidase activity disclosed regional differences according to the degree of hippocampal functional blockade. In comparison to control group, animals with bilateral inactivation showed increased CO activity in CA1 and CA3 areas of the hippocampus during retrieval, while the activity of the dentate gyrus substantially decreased. However, unilateral inactivated animals showed decreased CO activity in Ammon's horn and the dentate gyrus. This study demonstrated that retrieval recruits differentially the hippocampal subregions and the balance between them is altered with hippocampal functional lesions.