View-based organization and interplay of spatial working and long-term memories

PLoS One. 2014 Nov 19;9(11):e112793. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0112793. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Space perception provides egocentric, oriented views of the environment from which working and long-term memories are constructed. "Allocentric" (i.e. position-independent) long-term memories may be organized as graphs of recognized places or views but the interaction of such cognitive graphs with egocentric working memories is unclear. Here we present a simple coherent model of view-based working and long-term memories, together with supporting evidence from behavioral experiments. The model predicts (i) that within a given place, memories for some views may be more salient than others, (ii) that imagery of a target square should depend on the location where the recall takes place, and (iii) that recall favors views of the target square that would be obtained when approaching it from the current recall location. In two separate experiments in an outdoor urban environment, pedestrians were approached at various interview locations and asked to draw sketch maps of one of two well-known squares. Orientations of the sketch map productions depended significantly on distance and direction of the interview location from the target square, i.e. different views were recalled at different locations. Further analysis showed that location-dependent recall is related to the respective approach direction when imagining a walk from the interview location to the target square. The results are consistent with a view-based model of spatial long-term and working memories and their interplay.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Memory, Long-Term / physiology*
  • Memory, Short-Term / physiology*
  • Mental Recall / physiology
  • Models, Biological
  • Occipital Lobe / physiology
  • Orientation / physiology
  • Parietal Lobe / physiology
  • Recognition, Psychology / physiology
  • Spatial Memory / physiology*

Grants and funding

This work was carried out at the Department of Biology of the University of Tübingen. WGR received additional support from the Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) at the University of Tübingen. The CIN is an Excellence Cluster funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (www.dfg.de) within the Excellence Initiative under grant number EXC 307. Additional support was provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (www.bmbf.de) within the Tübingen Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience under grant number 01GQ1002A. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.