Museum Comparison (IMAGE)
Caption
The brain has a complex system for keeping track of which direction you are facing as you move about; remembering how to get from one place to another would otherwise be impossible. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have now shown how the brain anchors this mental compass. Their findings provide a neurological basis for something that psychologists have long observed about navigational behavior: people use geometrical relationships to orient themselves. Their experiment involved participants remembering the location of items in a virtual park. Its architecture was critical; because the park's four museums were visually distinct but all had the same internal layout, the researchers could compare the brain activity of a participant when her or she remembered the orientation of different sets of objects. Those comparisons revealed what visual cues people were using to orient themselves within the virtual park.
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University of Pennsylvania
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