Spatial Navigation Correlates With Language

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http://neurosciencenews.com/language-spatial-navigation-7921/

Summary:      Past experience comes into play when humans are attempting to comprehend the meaning of a sentence.  Physical experience is no different, and movement and spatial motion are also important when comprehending language.  Humans have spatial preferences that are either egocentric or allocentric.  Researchers conducted a study wherein participants solved two tasks.  One task was a virtual spatial navigation task to determine the spatial preference of the participant, and the second task, which involved understanding and pairing simple sentences with pictures.  The pictured were in either egocentric or allocentric perspectives.  The EEG showed that different areas of the brain were activated depending on the spatial preference of the participant, as were the
activated areas for the virtual navigation task.  New areas in the brain are found to be activated when comprehending language, whereas those areas were not previously recognized as contributing to speech/language comprehension.

Relation to Psychology: The information relates heavily to psychology use.  Firstly, the understanding of how language is processed and comprehended in the brain is an important field in physiological psychology.  In some cases of aphasia, there may be new pathways to restore comprehension through spatial functioning.  This is important due to the overlap of memory retrieval and language comprehension, which can aid in determination and treatment of different disorders.  This can be helpful in mental health treatment, as language ability can contribute to overall mental health.

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 13, 2017 at 6:04 PM

    It may be also important to consider various developmental disorders (autism, etc.) even with an "undamaged" areas related to aphasia, but also damaged areas, and see how these people function. Would other areas of the brain strengthen and compensate for lack of function/ perception?

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  2. UnknownNovember 15, 2017 at 6:39 PM

    This topic coincides with the subject discussed in my Cognitive Psychology class. It has been mentioned in this class that certain parts of the brain are activated when we access our memory, depending on the task at hand. Some of the stored concepts we have could be broken down and best understood by labeling them or using descriptions to familiarize ourselves with novel places. In a situation where we navigate our way through the surroundings we have been exposed to before, retrieval occurs by accessing those labels we have previously created. When this happens, it stimulates the speech, language, and comprehension areas of the brain.
    As for application, one unusual trick that people can use is the method of loci. This is a mnemonic device where a familiar location, typically the home one grew up in, will be divided into its different rooms. They must then associate rooms with the concepts they have to remember, and during retrieval, they would visualize these rooms, as if they are walking around the house. Apparently, the associated concepts will become easier to retrieve. Although it sounds complicated, it has been said to be an effective memory trick one could use.

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  3. UnknownNovember 17, 2017 at 6:50 AM

    This topic relates to my Cognitive Psychology class. Visual recognition allows us to see letters and words and our memory, long term and working, allow us to recognize and know these words. Working memory allows us to store visual stimuli in order to process and interpret them, helping us learn new words. Long-term memory allows us to get information that was processed in the past, helping us recognize words that we have previously learned. We create mental models when we process a description about a spatial lay out. Saccadic eye movements are a good example of this.

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