NavWell: A simplified virtual-reality platform for spatial navigation and memory experiments
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BRIEF REPORT
NavWell: A simplified virtual-reality platform for spatial navigation and memory experiments Sean Commins 1 & Joseph Duffin 2 & Keylor Chaves 2 & Diarmuid Leahy 2 & Kevin Corcoran 2 & Michelle Caffrey 1 & Lisa Keenan 1 & Deirdre Finan 2 & Conor Thornberry 1
# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2019
Abstract Being able to navigate, recall important locations, and find the way home are critical skills, essential for survival for both humans and animals. These skills can be examined in the laboratory using the Morris water maze, often considered the gold standard test of animal navigation. In this task, animals are required to locate and recall the location of an escape platform hidden in a pool filled with water. Because animals can not see the platform directly, they must use various landmarks in the environment to escape. With recent advances in technology and virtual reality (VR), many tasks originally used in the animal literature can now be translated for human studies. The virtual water maze task is no exception. However, a number of issues are associated with these mazes, including cost, lack of flexibility, and lack of standardization in terms of experimental designs and procedures. Here we present a virtual water maze system (NavWell) that is readily downloadable and free to use. The system allows for the easy design of experiments and the testing of participants on a desktop computer or fully immersive VR environment. The data from four independent experiments are presented in order to validate the software. From these experiments, a set of procedures for use with a number of well-known memory tests is suggested. This potentially can help with the standardization of navigational research and with navigational testing in the clinic or in an educational environment. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the software and plans for its development and future use. Keywords Navigation . Memory . Spatial . Virtual reality . Water maze
Knowing how to get from a to b, recalling important places and recognizing one’s current location are critical skills for everyday living. How animals and humans navigate has been an intense research topic across many decades. Such studies have led to theoretical debates on the nature of spatial memories, including cognitive mapping theory (O’Keefe & Nadel, 1979) or associative learning accounts (Pearce, 2009), as well as, elucidating the role played by various brains structures
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01310-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Sean Commins [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Maynooth University, County Kildare, Ireland
2
Department of Computer Science, Maynooth University, County Kildare, Ireland
(including the hippocampus, entorhinal, parietal, and retrospenial cortices; Morris, Garrud, Rawlins, & O’Keefe, 1982) in successful navigation. The discovery of place, grid, head-direction and other specialized cells (Grie
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