Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Mental maze solving.

D A Crowe1, B B Averbeck, M V Chafee

  • 1Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55417, USA.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
|October 31, 2000
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Local Anesthesia.

The Dental register·2021
Same author

The Influence of Systemic Inflammation on Treatment Response and Survival in Anal Squamous Cell Cancer.

Clinical oncology (Royal College of Radiologists (Great Britain))·2020
Same author

Examining belief and confidence in schizophrenia - ADDENDUM.

Psychological medicine·2019
Same author

Oxytocin by intranasal and intravenous routes reaches the cerebrospinal fluid in rhesus macaques: determination using a novel oxytocin assay.

Molecular psychiatry·2017
Same author

Karydakis flap for post-proctectomy perineal sinus: A case series and review.

International journal of surgery case reports·2016
Same author

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis and future risk for cardiovascular disease: a multicenter study.

Scandinavian journal of rheumatology·2016
Same journal

Sensorimotor Adaptation of Vocal Pitch Is Impaired in Cerebellar Ataxia.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Memory in the Palm of Your Hand: Smartphone-based Methods for Measuring Memory in the Wild.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Processing Asymmetry in Object-modifying Relative Clauses: Evidence from Functional Connectivity.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Extensive Experience Remodels Neural Task Circuitry to Escape the Frontal Bottleneck and Increase Automaticity of Categorization.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Investigating the Effects of Acute Stress on Neural Mechanisms of Self-controlled Decision-making.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2026
Same journal

Distilling the Neurophenomenological Signatures of Pure Awareness during Transcendental Meditation.

Journal of cognitive neuroscience·2026
See all related articles

This study reveals that solving visual mazes involves mental traversal, where response times are influenced by path length and turns. Increased maze size enhances processing efficiency for distance, suggesting a cognitive strategy for navigation.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Visual Perception

Background:

  • Understanding how humans mentally solve visual problems is crucial for cognitive science.
  • Previous research has explored spatial reasoning, but the specific mechanisms of visual maze solving remain less understood.
  • Investigating the interplay between visual input, cognitive processing, and behavioral responses in complex spatial tasks is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To elucidate the cognitive processes underlying the mental solution of visual mazes.
  • To determine how factors like path length, turns, and maze scale affect human response times and eye movements.
  • To test the hypothesis of mental path traversal during maze solving.

Main Methods:

  • Human subjects (N=13) solved numerous visual mazes with varying parameters (path length, turns, exit presence).

Related Experiment Videos

  • Response times (RT) were recorded and analyzed using multiple linear regression.
  • Eye movements (saccades and fixations) were recorded in a subset of subjects to correlate with cognitive processing.

    • Main Results:

    • Response times increased with path length, number of turns, direct distance, and presence of an exit.
    • Scaling up maze size (visual angle) significantly improved the efficiency of processing distance-related information.
    • Eye fixations linearly correlated with path length and turns, indicating systematic visual scanning and processing.

    Conclusions:

    • Visual maze solving is achieved through a process of mental traversal, where cognitive effort is allocated to segments of the path.
    • The brain efficiently processes scaled-up mazes, suggesting adaptive cognitive strategies for spatial navigation.
    • Eye movement patterns support the mental traversal hypothesis, with fixations guiding the cognitive exploration of the maze.