Our laboratory investigated the way that the brain represents a 3D scene when a moving observer navigates a 3D environment. Neuroscientists tend to explore two competing theories: (i) we reconstruct a cognitive map based on 3D coordinates or (ii) we use a view-based strategy. What type of representation do humans generate?
We used immersive virtual reality to investigate this question.
Participants in our experiments wore a head mounted display and to navigate towards a target object or a previously visited location. This allowed us to investigate the type of representation participants use (based on 3D coordinates, a view-based representation or a version of the latter).
Many of our experiments (and others) suggest that the brain does not build a 3D world-based coordinate frame. What it could be doing instead is a trickier question. In the search for possible hypotheses to test, we collaborate with colleagues in computer vision, where there are interesting new ideas about alternative models of spatial representation in mapping and navigation.