From cognitive maps to spatial schemas

A schema refers to a structured body of prior knowledge that captures common patterns across related experiences. Schemas have been studied separately in the realms of episodic memory and spatial navigation across different species and have been grounded in theories of memory consolidation, but there has been little attempt to integrate our understanding across domains, particularly in humans. We propose that experiences during navigation with many similarly structured environments give rise to the formation of spatial schemas (for example, the expected layout of modern cities) that share properties with but are distinct from cognitive maps (for example, the memory of a modern city) and event schemas (such as expected events in a modern city) at both cognitive and neural levels. We describe earlier theoretical frameworks and empirical findings relevant to spatial schemas, along with more targeted investigations of spatial schemas in human and non-human animals. Consideration of architecture and urban analytics, including the influence of scale and regionalization, on different properties of spatial schemas may provide a powerful approach to advance our understanding of spatial schemas

An Exploration of Spatial Memory Through Eye Movements and Navigation in Virtual Reality

Finding ones way in different environments is a common everyday experience. As experiences navigating an environment accumulate over time, spatial representations of visuoperceptual identities of landmarks and geometric relations between them are formed in the brain. Navigation in a familiar environment may be guided by a neural interaction between different types of spatial representations: visual percepts and long-term spatial knowledge of geometric relations, resembling schemas. This thesis explores whether navigation in a virtual-reality simulation of a familiar environment can be explained by analysis of eye movements during travel periods and the quality of spatial memories, which were acquired when individuals navigated the same environment in real life over months to years. Results show a link between spatial memory integrity and eye movements during navigation in virtual reality. In multilevel models of navigation performance, the interaction between spatial memory and eye movements did not adequately predict outcomes after practice effects were controlled. These findings suggest that analysis of eye movements during navigation in a familiar environment may provide insight into retrieval cues that activate schema-like spatial representations to guide optimal wayfinding decisions

Inflammation: A Contributor to Depressive Comorbidity in Inflammatory Skin Disease

The prevalence of affective disorders such as depression and anxiety is particularly high in patients with autoimmune diseases, including inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and hidradenitis suppurativa. A dysregulated immune response has been linked to the precipitation of depression in many patient populations. However, studies examining the extent to which the underlying skin disease inflammatory processes contribute to depression and a subsequent decline in quality of life are limited. The published literature over the past 5 years was reviewed for evidence of a relationship between depression and inflammatory processes in the context of skin pathology. The findings, particularly the evidence from interventional clinical trials of targeted anti-cytokine therapies, suggest that pro-inflammatory cytokines associated with several skin diseases may be causally linked with the coexistent depressive symptomology

The neural basis of preference for curvature in architecture

People prefer curvilinear over angular visual forms, across different object categories, including architectural scenes (Chuquichambi et al, 2022). It has been proposed that curvilinear forms were associated with rewarding experiences in our evolutionary history, thus, they strongly influence our behaviours towards objects (Bar &amp; Neta, 2006). What is the neural basis of curvature processing in the visual cortex? Yue et al. (2020) made important inroads in answering this question by investigating regions of the brain that exhibit sensitivity to curvature while participants passively viewed images in the fMRI scanner and found that activation in early visual areas and the temporal cortex is modulated by curvature. We extended these findings to curvature processing while participants made active judgements about architectural scenes. We reanalyzed fMRI data collected from participants while they engaged in beauty judgements (beautiful/not beautiful) or approach-avoidance decisions (enter/exit) in relation to images of architectural interiors (Vartanian et al., 2013). Adopting a computational approach, we obtained a normalized metric to measure curvature variation in each image and used a parametric analysis to examine the co-variation between curvature and brain activation, correcting for luminance and contrast. The results show that bilateral activation in early visual areas covaried with curvature, and critically, inferior occipital gyrus (BA 17/18) exhibited sensitivity to curvature under both conditions. This finding suggests that early visual areas respond to variation in curvature while people are actively engaged in hedonic and utilitarian valuations of architecture.<br/

The neural basis of preference for curvature in architecture

People prefer curvilinear over angular visual forms, across different object categories, including architectural scenes (Chuquichambi et al, 2022). It has been proposed that curvilinear forms were associated with rewarding experiences in our evolutionary history, thus, they strongly influence our behaviours towards objects (Bar &amp; Neta, 2006). What is the neural basis of curvature processing in the visual cortex? Yue et al. (2020) made important inroads in answering this question by investigating regions of the brain that exhibit sensitivity to curvature while participants passively viewed images in the fMRI scanner and found that activation in early visual areas and the temporal cortex is modulated by curvature. We extended these findings to curvature processing while participants made active judgements about architectural scenes. We reanalyzed fMRI data collected from participants while they engaged in beauty judgements (beautiful/not beautiful) or approach-avoidance decisions (enter/exit) in relation to images of architectural interiors (Vartanian et al., 2013). Adopting a computational approach, we obtained a normalized metric to measure curvature variation in each image and used a parametric analysis to examine the co-variation between curvature and brain activation, correcting for luminance and contrast. The results show that bilateral activation in early visual areas covaried with curvature, and critically, inferior occipital gyrus (BA 17/18) exhibited sensitivity to curvature under both conditions. This finding suggests that early visual areas respond to variation in curvature while people are actively engaged in hedonic and utilitarian valuations of architecture.<br/

Additional file 1: of Longitudinal studies that use data collected as part of usual care risk reporting biased results: a systematic review

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