Brain dynamics of real-world navigation

Studying how the brain supports memory recall and navigation in real-world environments is a significant challenge due to the immobility of standard fMRI and MEG methods. To surmount this challenge we have worked with highly detailed virtual reality based on real-world environments (Spiers and Maguire 2006), video and Google Street View simulations of real-world environments (Howard et al., 2014; Patai et al., 2017) and are exploring the use of fNIRS to record brain activity during fully mobile real-world navigation.

We have recently begun to study real-world navigation ability using GPS-tracking (Coutrot et al., 2018) and in the recall of routes by London taxi drivers [link to Eva blog].

Relevant publications from group: Spiers and Maguire 2006 Neuroimage Spiers and Maguire 2007 TiCS Howard et al., 2014 Cur Biol Javadi et al., 2017 Nat Comms Patai et al., 2017 BioArix Coutrot et al., 2018 BioArix

See also: Article in Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brain-takes-a-guided-tour-of-london/

What goes on in the mind of a London cabbie?