Head direction (HD) neurons, signalling facing direction, generate a signal that is primarily anchored to the outside world by visual inputs. We investigated the route for visual landmark information into the HD system in rats. There are two candidates: an evolutionarily older, larger subcortical retino-tectal pathway and a more recently evolved, smaller cortical retino-geniculo-striate pathway. We disrupted the cortical pathway by lesioning the dorsal lateral geniculate thalamic nuclei bilaterally, and recorded HD cells in the postsubicular cortex as rats foraged in a visual-cue-controlled enclosure. In lesioned rats we found the expected number of postsubicular HD cells. Although directional tuning curves were broader across a trial, this was attributable to the increased instability of otherwise normal-width tuning curves. Tuning curves were also poorly responsive to polarizing visual landmarks and did not distinguish cues based on their visual pattern. Thus, the retino-geniculo-striate pathway is not crucial for the generation of an underlying, tightly tuned directional signal but does provide the main route for vision-based anchoring of the signal to the outside world, even when visual cues are high in contrast and low in detail. KEY POINTS: Head direction (HD) cells indicate the facing direction of the head, using visual landmarks to distinguish directions. In rats, we investigated whether this visual information is routed through the thalamus to the visual cortex or arrives via the superior colliculus, which is a phylogenetically older and (in rodents) larger pathway. We lesioned the thalamic dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) in rats and recorded the responsiveness of cortical HD cells to visual cues. We found that cortical HD cells had normal tuning curves, but these were slightly more unstable during a trial. Most notably, HD cells in dLGN-lesioned animals showed little ability to distinguish highly distinct cues and none to distinguish more similar cues. These results suggest that directional processing of visual landmarks in mammals requires the geniculo-cortical pathway, which raises questions about when and how visual directional landmark processing appeared during evolution.

Spatial locations can be encoded and maintained in working memory using different representations and strategies. Fine-grained representations provide detailed stimulus information, but are cognitively demanding and prone to inexactness. The uncertainty in fine-grained representations can be compensated by the use of coarse, but robust categorical representations. In this study, we employed an individual differences approach to identify brain activity correlates of the use of fine-grained and categorical representations in spatial working memory. We combined data from six functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, resulting in a sample of $155$ ($77$ women, $25 \\pm 5$ years) healthy participants performing a spatial working memory task. Our results showed that individual differences in the use of spatial representations in working memory were associated with distinct patterns of brain activity. Higher precision of fine-grained representations was related to greater engagement of attentional and control brain systems throughout the task trial, and the stronger deactivation of the default network at the time of stimulus encoding. In contrast, the use of categorical representations was associated with lower default network activity during encoding and higher frontoparietal network activation during maintenance. These results may indicate a greater need for attentional resources and protection against interference for fine-grained compared with categorical representations.

Studies have explored how human spatial attention appears allocated in three-dimensional (3D) space. It has been demonstrated that target distance from the viewer can modulate performance in target detection and localization tasks: reaction times are shorter when targets appear nearer to the observer compared to farther distances (i.e., near advantage). Times have reached to quantitatively analyze this literature. In the current meta-analysis, 29 studies (n = 1260 participants) examined target detection and localization across 3-D space. Moderator analyses included: detection vs localization tasks, spatial cueing vs uncued tasks, control of retinal size across depth, central vs peripheral targets, real-space vs stereoscopic vs monocular depth environments, and inclusion of in-trial motion. The analyses revealed a near advantage for spatial attention that was affected by the moderating variables of controlling for retinal size across depth, the use of spatial cueing tasks, and the inclusion of in-trial motion. Overall, these results provide an up-to-date quantification of the effect of depth and provide insight into methodological differences in evaluating spatial attention.

Understanding what others are doing is a fundamental aspect of social cognition and a skill that is arguably linked to visuospatial perspective taking (VPT), the ability to apprehend the spatial layout of a scene from another\'s perspective. Yet, with few and notable exceptions, action understanding and VPT are rarely studied together. Participants (43 females, 37 males) made judgements about the spatial layout of objects in a scene from the perspective of an avatar who was positioned at 0°, 90°, 270° or 180° relative to the participant. In a variant of a traditional VPT task, the avatar either interacted with the objects in the scene, by pointing to or reaching for them, or was present but did not engage with the objects. Although the task was identical across all conditions - to say whether a target object is to the right or left of a control object - we show that the avatar\'s actions modulates performance. Specifically, participants were more accurate when the avatar engaged with the target object, and correspondingly, less accurate and slower when the avatar interacted with the control objects. As these effects were independent of the angular disparity between participant and avatar perspectives, we conclude that action understanding and VPT are likely linked via the rapid deployment of two separate cognitive mechanisms. All participants provided a measure of self-reported empathy and we show that response times decrease with increasing empathy scores for female but not for male participants. However, within the range of \'typical\' empathy scores, defined here as the interquartile range where 50 % of the data lie, females were faster than males. These findings lend further insight into the relationship between spatial and social perspective taking.

Research shows that high- and low-pitch sounds can be associated with various meanings. For example, high-pitch sounds are associated with small concepts, whereas low-pitch sounds are associated with large concepts. This study presents three experiments revealing that high-pitch sounds are also associated with open concepts and opening hand actions, while low-pitch sounds are associated with closed concepts and closing hand actions. In Experiment 1, this sound-meaning correspondence effect was shown using the two-alternative forced-choice task, while Experiments 2 and 3 used reaction time tasks to show this interaction. In Experiment 2, high-pitch vocalizations were found to facilitate opening hand gestures, and low-pitch vocalizations were found to facilitate closing hand gestures, when performed simultaneously. In Experiment 3, high-pitched vocalizations were produced particularly rapidly when the visual target stimulus presented an open object, and low-pitched vocalizations were produced particularly rapidly when the target presented a closed object. These findings are discussed concerning the meaning of intonational cues. They are suggested to be based on cross-modally representing conceptual spatial knowledge in sensory, motor, and affective systems. Additionally, this pitch-opening effect might share cognitive processes with other pitch-meaning effects.

Theories of spatial term meanings often focus on geometric properties of objects and locations as the key to understanding meaning. For example, in English, \"The cat is on the mat\" might engage geometric properties characterizing the figure (\'cat\', a point) and the ground (\'mat\', a plane) as well as the geometric relationship between the two objects (\'on\', + vertical, 0 distance from ground object). However, substantial literature suggests that geometric properties are far from sufficient to capture the meanings of many spatial expressions, and that instead, force-dynamic properties of objects that afford containment or support relationships may be crucial to the meanings of those expressions. I will argue that both approaches are needed to understand the variety of spatial terms that appear in language and further, that spatial terms fall into two distinct sets, one represented by geometric properties of figure and ground and their spatial relationships, and the other by the force-dynamic properties of objects and their relationships. This division of labor within spatial terms has many consequences, with the two types differing in the nature of the acquisition problem and likely learning mechanisms, the extent and kind of cross-linguistic variation that has been observed, and the application of pragmatic principles to spatial terms. Speculatively, the two types may also be rooted in different cognitive systems and their neural substrates.

The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon.

Children have persistent difficulty with foundational measurement concepts, which may be linked to the instruction they receive. Here, we focus on testing various ways to support their understanding that rulers comprise spatial interval units. We examined whether evidence-based learning tools-disconfirming evidence and/or structural alignment-enhance their understanding of ruler units. Disconfirming evidence, in this context, involves having children count the spatial interval units under an object that is not aligned with the origin of a ruler. Structural alignment, in this context, involves highlighting what a ruler unit is by overlaying plastic unit chips on top of ruler units when an object is aligned with the origin of a ruler. In three experiments employing a pre-test/training/post-test design, a total of 120 second graders were randomly assigned to one of six training conditions (two training conditions per experiment). The training conditions included different evidence-based learning principles or \"business-as-usual\" instruction (control), with equal allocation to each (N = 20 for each condition). In each experiment, children who did not perform above chance level on the pre-test were selected to continue with training, which resulted in a total of 88 students for the analysis of improvement. The children showed significant improvement in training conditions that included disconfirming evidence, but not in the structural alignment or control conditions. However, an exploratory analysis suggests that improvement occurred more rapidly and was retained better when structural alignment was combined with disconfirming evidence compared to disconfirming evidence alone.

Spatial proximity to important stimuli often induces impulsive behaviour. How we overcome impulsive tendencies is what determines behaviour to be adaptive. Here, we used virtual reality to investigate whether the spatial proximity of stimuli is causally related to the supplementary motor area (SMA) functions. In two experiments, we set out to investigate these processes using a virtual environment that recreates close and distant spaces to test the causal contributions of the SMA in spatial impulsivity. In an online first experiment (N = 93) we validated and measured the influence of distant stimuli using a go/no-go task with close (21 cm) or distant stimuli (360 cm). In experiment 2 (N = 28), we applied transcranial static magnetic stimulation (tSMS) over the SMA (double-blind, crossover, sham-controlled design) to test its computations in controlling impulsive tendencies towards close vs distant stimuli. Reaction times and error rates (omission and commission) were analysed. In addition, the EZ Model parameters (a, v, Ter and MDT) were computed. Close stimuli elicited faster responses compared to distant stimuli but also exhibited higher error rates, specifically in commission errors (experiment 1). Real stimulation over SMA slowed response latencies (experiment 2), an effect mediated by an increase in decision thresholds (a). Current findings suggest that impulsivity might be modulated by spatial proximity, resulting in accelerated actions that may lead to an increase of inaccurate responses to nearby objects. Our study also provides a first starting point on the role of the SMA in regulating spatial impulsivity.

UNASSIGNED: The purpose of this study was to examine the association between video gaming experience, spatial cognition, and laparoscopic surgical skills in a cohort of 50 medical students.
UNASSIGNED: Participants were assessed for video gaming experience, spatial cognition, and laparoscopic skills. The number of hours played per week was also recorded. Structural equation modeling was used to determine the relationship between these variables.
UNASSIGNED: Our findings revealed that video gaming experience and spatial cognition exerted a positive influence on laparoscopic skills. Interestingly, students who excessively indulged in video games without concomitant improvements in spatial cognition experienced a negative impact on their laparoscopic skills.
UNASSIGNED: These findings underscore the potential of video gaming as a tool for improving surgical skills, but also highlight the potential downsides of excessive gaming. The positive correlation between gaming and surgical skills suggests that video games could be integrated into surgical education. Future research should focus on identifying specific video games that effectively promote visuospatial skills as well as determining the optimal balance between gaming and traditional surgical training.