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Memory consolidation affects the interplay of place and response navigation
Patrizia M Maier1, Deetje Iggena1, Christoph J Ploner2
1Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Department of Neurology, Berlin, Germany; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Faculty of Philosophy, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Berlin, Germany.
Summary
Human spatial navigation shifts from place-based to response-based strategies over time. Place memory, reliant on the hippocampus, fades faster than response memory, impacting navigation choices during systems consolidation.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Spatial Navigation
Background:
- Spatial navigation relies on distinct memory systems: place (landmark-based) and response (sequence-based).
- Memory consolidation transforms these representations over time, but its impact on navigation strategies remains unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how the transformation of memory representations affects place and response navigation in humans over different time delays.
- To determine the time course of place and response memory decay and their influence on navigation strategy selection.
Main Methods:
- Healthy adults navigated a virtual maze, with strategy preference and memory recall assessed after 1 hour, 1 day, and 2 weeks.
- The study design captured early synaptic changes, overnight sleep effects, and long-term network reorganization.
Main Results:
- Navigation strategy preference shifted significantly over time.
- Place strategy use dominated after short delays (≤1 day) with high landmark exploration.
- After 2 weeks, place strategy use decreased, with equal reliance on place and response strategies and increased path repetition, suggesting response strategies compensate for fading place memory.
Conclusions:
- Place memory, dependent on hippocampal function, decays faster than response memory, which relies on extra-hippocampal areas.
- The shift from place to response navigation reflects context-dependent changes and the reorganization of navigation networks during systems consolidation.
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