Neural representations that support human spatial navigation

The critical role that spatial navigation plays in daily life is seen in Alzheimer’s Disease, where spatial disorientation places patients at risk of harm, leading to a debilitating loss of independence. Dr Horner’s lab is interested in how the brain supports spatial navigation.

Their research combines virtual reality environments with fMRI, MEG, and multivariate pattern analyses to reveal the neural representations that support spatial navigation in healthy human participants. They develop novel stimulus sets of real-world locations as well as bespoke virtual reality environments that allow them to test specific hypotheses from neurocognitive models of spatial navigation.

Featured publications

• Berens, S.C., Joensen, B.H., & Horner, A.J., (2021) Tracking the Emergence of Location-based Spatial Representations in Human Scene-Selective Cortex, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33(3), 445-462.
• Horner, A.J., Bisby, J.A., Wang, A., Bogus, K., & Burgess, N., (2016) The role of spatial boundaries in shaping long-term event representations, Cognition, 154, 151-164.
• Horner, A.J., Bisby, J.A., Zotow, E., Bush, D., & Burgess, N., (2016) Grid-like processing of imagined navigation, Current Biology, 26, 842-847.