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"spatial exploration"
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Spacecare : a kid's guide to surviving space
\"Filled with answers from actual astronauts, Space Care is the perfect book for kids who dream of going to space! Have you ever wondered how astronauts stay healthy in space? What if an astronaut gets sick on the space station? Does snot run in space? This fascinating photo-illustrated look at space and medicine explores how scientists and physicians study astronauts in space, how they help keep them safe, and what we've learned about the human body through space exploration. Questions from real kids and answers from astronauts, along with photos from NASA, combine for an out-of-this-world exploration of health.\"
BOOK
Towards a characterization of human spatial exploration behavior
Spatial exploration is a complex behavior that can be used to gain information about developmental processes, personality traits, or mental disorders. Typically, this is done by analyzing movement throughout an unknown environment. However, in human research, until now there has been no overview on how to analyze movement trajectories with regard to exploration. In the current paper, we provide a discussion of the most common movement measures currently used in human research on spatial exploration, and suggest new indices to capture the efficiency of exploration. We additionally analyzed a large dataset (
n
= 409) of human participants exploring a novel virtual environment to investigate whether movement measures could be assigned to meaningful higher-order components. Hierarchical clustering of the different measures revealed three different components of exploration (exploratory behavior, spatial shape, and exploration efficiency) that in part replicate components of spatial exploratory behavior identified in animal studies. A validation of our analysis on a second dataset (
n
= 102) indicated that two of these clusters are stable across different contexts as well as participant samples. For the exploration efficiency cluster, our validation showed that it can be further differentiated into a goal-directed versus a general, area-directed component. By also sharing data and code for our analyses, our results provide much-needed tools for the systematic analysis of human spatial exploration behavior.
Journal Article
Space 2069 : after Apollo: back to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond
Half a century after Apollo 11 we have still not returned to the Moon, but that is about to change. The thirteenth person to walk on the Moon could soon be part of a crew establishing a base on the lip of a crater at the lunar south pole. The discovery of ice in the eternal shadows of the polar regions transforms our ability to live on the Moon. From bases on the Moon we can make the long, lonely and dangerous voyage to Mars, where there is also ice. The obstacles are many, not least the fragilities of the human body. And what type of world would the first Mars explorers find?
BOOK
Less spatial exploration is associated with poorer spatial memory in midlife adults
Despite its importance for navigation, very little is known about how the normal aging process affects spatial exploration behavior. We aimed to investigate: (1) how spatial exploration behavior may be altered early in the aging process, (2) the relationship between exploration behavior and subsequent spatial memory, and (3) whether exploration behavior can classify participants according to age.
Fifty healthy young (aged 18-28) and 87 healthy midlife adults (aged 43-61) freely explored a desktop virtual maze, learning the locations of nine target objects. Various exploration behaviors (object visits, distance traveled, turns made, etc.) were measured. In the test phase, participants navigated from one target object to another without feedback, and their wayfinding success (% correct trials) was measured.
In the exploration phase, midlife adults exhibited less exploration overall compared to young adults, and prioritized learning target object locations over maze layout. In the test phase, midlife adults exhibited less wayfinding success when compared to the young adults. Furthermore, following principal components analysis (PCA), regression analyses indicated that both exploration quantity and quality components were associated with wayfinding success in the midlife group, but not the young adults. Finally, we could classify participants according to age with similar accuracy using either their exploration behavior or wayfinding success scores.
Our results aid in the understanding of how aging impacts spatial exploration, and encourages future investigations into how pathological aging may affect spatial exploration behavior.
Journal Article
FMCSSE: fuzzy modified cuckoo search with spatial exploration for biomedical image segmentation
Biomedical image segmentation is considered an important and challenging task. Automated biomedical image analysis plays a major role in the early and quick diagnosis of diseases. Accurate and precise segmentation can lead to early treatment planning and it demands sophisticated approaches. Inspired by this, a novel approach is proposed. This approach will be known as the Fuzzy modified cuckoo search with spatial exploration (FMCSSE). High correlation among pixels is an important property of image data and pixels surrounding a particular pixel possess similar feature information. Therefore, it is extremely essential to consider the spatial information to generate a meaningful segmented image. The traditional fuzzy clustering approach is not suitable for exploiting spatial information. Therefore, this work is designed to explore spatial information and find the optimal clusters from biomedical images with the help of the fuzzy-modified cuckoo search approach. This approach is applied to different biomedical images and compared with various state-of-the-art unsupervised approaches like FEMO, FMCS, MCS, and CS. The proposed approach does not suffer from the choice of the initial assignment of the cluster centers. The proposed approach uses the type-2 fuzzy system blended with the modified cuckoo search (McCulloch approach) and spatial exploration procedure. Both qualitative and quantitative results show the superiority of the FMCSSE approach in terms of performance.
Journal Article
Enriching Hippocampal Memory Function in Older Adults Through Real-World Exploration
Age-related structural and functional changes in the hippocampus can have a severe impact on hippocampal-dependent memory performance. Here, we tested the hypothesis that a real-world spatial exploration and learning intervention would improve hippocampal-dependent memory performance in healthy older adults. We developed a scavenger hunt task that participants performed over the course of a 4-week behavioral intervention period. Following this intervention, participants' lure discrimination index (LDI) on the Mnemonic Similarity Task was significantly higher than it was at baseline and greater than that of a No-Contact Control Group, while traditional recognition scores remained relatively unchanged. These results point to the viability of a spatial exploration intervention for improving hippocampal-dependent memory in older adults.
Journal Article
Peripersonal Visuospatial Abilities in Williams Syndrome Analyzed by a Table Radial Arm Maze Task
Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic deletion syndrome characterized by severe visuospatial deficits affecting spatial exploration and navigation abilities in extra-personal space. To date, little is known about spatial elaboration and reaching abilities in the peripersonal space in individuals with WS. The present study is aimed at evaluating the visuospatial abilities in individuals with WS and comparing their performances with those of mental age-matched typically developing (TD) children by using a highly sensitive ecological version of the Radial Arm Maze (table RAM). We evaluated 15 individuals with WS and 15 TD children in two different table RAM paradigms: the free-choice paradigm, mainly to analyze the aspects linked to procedural and memory components, and the forced-choice paradigm, to disentangle the components linked to spatial working memory from the procedural ones. Data show that individuals with WS made significantly more working memory errors as compared to TD children, thus evidencing a marked deficit in resolving the task when the mnesic load increased. Our findings provide new insights on the cognitive profile of WS.
Journal Article
Improving Hippocampal Memory Through the Experience of a Rich Minecraft Environment
It is well known that the brain changes in response to the surrounding environment. The hippocampus has been shown to be particularly susceptible to environmental enrichment, with effects ranging from the generation of new hippocampal neurons and synapses to an increased expression of neurotrophic factors. While many of these changes in the hippocampus are well documented in animals, our understanding of how environmental enrichment can apply to humans is more ambiguous. In animals, spatial exploration has been shown to be a clear way to elicit the effects of environmental enrichment and considering the role of the hippocampus in spatial navigation, which has been shown in both animal models and humans, it suggests a viable avenue for translation of environmental enrichment to humans. Here, we test the hypothesis that the spatial exploration of a virtual video game environment, can impact the hippocampus and lead to an improvement in hippocampal-dependent memory. Using the video game Minecraft, we tested four groups of participants, each playing on custom servers and focusing on different aspects of Minecraft to test the effects of both building and exploration over the course of 2 weeks. We found an improvement in hippocampus-associated memory from pre-test to post-test and that the degree of improvement was tied to both the amount of exploration of the Minecraft world and the complexity of the structures built within Minecraft. Thus, the number of enrichment participants engaged in while playing Minecraft was directly correlated with improvements in hippocampal-dependent memory outside of the game.
Journal Article
Sense of space: Tactile sense for exploratory behavior of roots
In soil, plant roots grow in heterogeneous environments. Plant roots are always facing the difficulty of searching effectively the patchy natural resources, such as water, oxygen, ions and mineral nutrition. Numerous studies reported that root apex navigation enables roots to explore complex environments. In this short communication, we characterize how growing maize roots explore narrow space available with two experimental settings: tactile exploration of narrow glass tube and circumnutation in free space. We also discuss root growth in the soil in terms of foraging behavior guided by the sensory root apex.
Journal Article
Switching of behavioral modes and their modulation by a geometrical cue in the ciliate Stentor coeruleus
Protists ubiquitously live in nature and play key roles in the food web chain. Their habitats consist of various geometrical structures, such as porous media and rigid surfaces, affecting their motilities. A kind of protist, Stentor coeruleus, exhibits free swimming and adhering for feeding. Under environmental and culture conditions, these organisms are often found in sediments with complex geometries. The determination of anchoring location is essential for their lives. However, the factors that induce the behavioral transition from swimming to adhering are still unknown. In this study, we quantitatively characterized the behavioral transitions in S. coeruleus and observed the behavior in a chamber with dead ends made by a simple structure mimicking the environmental structures. As a result, the cell adheres and feeds in narrow spaces between the structure and the chamber wall. It may be reasonable for the organism to hide itself from predators and capture prey in these spaces. The behavioral strategy for the exploration and exploitation of spaces with a wide variety of geometries in their habitats is discussed.
Journal Article