SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “spatial”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 991 records · Page 55Linked to original sources

PubMed2003

Developmental D-methamphetamine treatment selectively induces spatial navigation impairments in reference memory in the Morris water maze while sparing working memory.

In previous studies, we have shown that P11-20 treatment with D-methamphetamine (MA) (10 mg/kg x 4/day at 2-h intervals) induces impairments in spatial learning and memory in the Morris water maze after the offspring reach adulthood. Using a split-litter, multiple dose, design (0, 5, 10, and 15 mg/kg MA administered s.c. 4/day at 2-h intervals), the spatial learning effect was further explored with a multiple shifted platform (reversal), reference memory-based procedure and a working memory procedure. Prior to spatial learning, animals were first tested for swimming ability (in a straight swimming channel), sequential learning (in the Cincinnati multiple-T water maze), and proximal cue learning (in the Morris water maze). Rats were then assessed in the hidden platform, reference memory-based spatial version of the Morris maze for acquisition and on five subsequent phases in which the platform was moved to new locations. After the reference memory-based, fixed platform position learning phases, animals were tested in the trial-dependent, matching-to-sample, working memory version of the Morris maze. No group differences were found in straight channel, sequential maze, or cued Morris maze performance. By contrast, all MA groups were impaired in spatial learning during acquisition, multiple shift, and shifted with a reduced platform phases of reference memory-based learning. In addition, MA animals were impaired on memory (probe) trials during the acquisition and shifted with a reduced platform phases of learning. No effects on trial-dependent, matching-to-sample, working memory were found. The findings demonstrate that neonatal treatment with MA induces a selective impairment of reference memory-based spatial learning while sparing sequential, cued, and working memory-based learning.

Animals↗

PubMed2002

Proximal versus distal cue utilization in spatial navigation: the role of visual acuity?

Proximal versus distal cue use in the Morris water maze is a widely accepted strategy for the dissociation of various problems affecting spatial navigation in rats such as aging, head trauma, lesions, and pharmacological or hormonal agents. Of the limited number of ontogenetic rat studies conducted, the majority have approached the problem of preweanling spatial navigation through a similar proximal-distal dissociation. An implicit assumption among all of these studies has been that the animal's visual system is sufficient to permit robust spatial navigation. We challenged this assumption and have addressed the role of visual acuity in spatial navigation in the preweanling Fischer 344-N rat by training animals to locate a visible (proximal) or hidden (distal) platform using double or null extramaze cues within the testing environment. All pups demonstrated improved performance across training, but animals presented with a visible platform, regardless of extramaze cues, simultaneously reached asymptotic performance levels; animals presented with a hidden platform, dependent upon location of extramaze cues, differentially reached asymptotic performance levels. Probe trial performance, defined by quadrant time and platform crossings, revealed that distal-double-cue pups demonstrated spatial navigational ability superior to that of the remaining groups. These results suggest that a pup's ability to spatially navigate a hidden platform is dependent on not only its response repertoire and task parameters, but also its visual acuity, as determined by the extramaze cue location within the testing environment. The standard hidden versus visible platform dissociation may not be a satisfactory strategy for the control of potential sensory deficits.

Aging↗

PubMed2002

Ethanol impairs behavioral strategy use in naive rats but does not prevent spatial learning in the water maze in pretrained rats.

RATIONALE: Ethanol impairs performance in the water maze in rats. A detailed behavioral analysis is required to fully evaluate the nature of the impairment. OBJECTIVES: A detailed behavioral analysis was carried out to evaluate the effect of ethanol on performance in the water maze task in male hooded rats given 2.0 or 6.0 g/kg ethanol by gavage. Multiple measures of water maze strategies learning and spatial learning were studied. METHODS: Water maze trials were recorded on videotape and digitized for offline analysis. Some rats were naive at the start of spatial training, whereas other rats received water maze strategies pretraining prior to spatial training to familiarize them with the general behavioral strategies required in the task. RESULTS: Naive ethanol-treated rats exhibited both spatial learning and water maze behavioral strategies impairments. There was no evidence of a spatial learning impairment that was independent of an associated behavioral strategies impairment. Further, ethanol impaired the ability of naive rats to swim to a stable visible platform. Pretrained ethanol-treated rats performed significantly better than naive ethanol-treated rats on almost all measures, and were indistinguishable from controls on most measures. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that ethanol may impair water maze performance in naive rats by interfering with their ability to acquire and use required water maze behavioral strategies and generate adaptive swim paths. Ethanol does not prevent robust spatial learning in rats that are familiar with required water maze behavioral strategies.

Animals↗

PubMed1997

Prior non-spatial pretraining eliminates sensorimotor disturbances and impairments in water maze learning caused by diazepam.

Diazepam has been reported to impair spatial learning in the water maze. This experiment reexamined this topic using control groups that had first been non-spatially pretrained to familiarize them with the general behavioral strategies required in the water maze task. Naive rats given diazepam (0.5, 3.0, 6.0 mg/kg, IP) displayed dose-related maze acquisition impairments and sensorimotor disturbances (swimming in the periphery of the pool, deflecting off or swimming over the hidden platform, jumping off the platform when placed there after a trial, ataxia on a narrow wooden beam). The sensorimotor disturbances interfered with the acquisition of information about the spatial location of the platform, occurred in the absence of impairments in a subsequent visible platform task or swim speed, and correlated strongly with measures of acquisition. In contrast, the non-spatially pretrained groups did not exhibit sensorimotor disturbances in the water maze and acquired the maze task as rapidly under diazepam as control rats. The non-spatially pretrained groups continued to display diazepam-induced sensorimotor disturbances (ataxia) in a novel beam walking task. CGS8216 (10.0 or 20.0 mg/kg), a benzodiazepine receptor antagonist, attenuated the effect of 3.0 or 6.0 mg/kg diazepam in naive rats, suggesting that the effects of diazepam were mediated by benzodiazepine receptors. Occupancy of benzodiazepine receptors by diazepam does not prevent robust spatial learning in the water maze.

Animals↗

PubMed2026

Pattern Formation in a Spatial Public Goods Dilemma due to Diffusive or Directed Motion.

The costly provision of public goods serves as a model problem for the evolution of cooperative behavior, presenting a social dilemma between the collective benefits of shared resources and the individual incentive to free-ride in resource production. The spatial structure of populations can also impact cooperation over public goods, as diffusion of public goods and intentional motion of individuals towards regions with greater resources can interact with population and public goods dynamics to produce heterogeneous patterns in the spatial distribution of strategies and resources. In this paper, we build off a model introduced by Young and Belmonte for the reaction dynamics of interacting individuals and an explicit public good, deriving a system of PDEs that describes the spatial profiles of strategies and the public good in the presence of both diffusive motion of individuals and resources and chemotaxis-like directed motion of individuals in response to gradients in the concentration of public goods. Through linear stability analysis, we show that spatial patterns in strategic and public goods profiles can emerge due to either Turing instability with high defector diffusivity or a directed-motion instability through strong sensitivity of cooperators towards increasing resource concentration. We further explore the emergent spatial patterns with a mix of weakly nonlinear stability analysis and numerical simulation, showing that, for a wide range of reaction parameters, diffusion-driven instability appears to increase cooperation and public goods across the spatial domain, while directed motion of cooperators towards public goods tends to decrease cooperation and environmental quality across the environment.

Models, Biological↗

PubMed1987

Effect of stimulus configuration on spatial judgments in search tasks.

Although children over one year of age are able to code spatial information with respect to objects other than the self, there are many instances in which the self is inappropriately used as a spatial referent by children between 2 and 4 years of age. L. G. Braine and R. A. Eder (1983, Developmental Psychology, 19, 45-55) found that, in a search task, the nature of the array influenced the spatial referent used by 2-year-old children. The present work investigated the effect of varying the number, size, and arrangement of boxes in the array. It was found that only the number of boxes defining the left and right sides of the array influenced performance; that is, multiple boxes were associated with the use of external objects as spatial referents. These results were interpreted as stemming from the tendency of young children to code the location of an object with respect to nearby objects. This tendency would lead to the use of adjacent boxes and environmental objects as spatial referents for the multiple-box side, and the use of the self as a spatial referent for the single-box side.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed2004

Acute ethanol administration selectively impairs spatial memory in C57BL/6J mice.

It has been shown in rats that acute ethanol administration, via a single intraperitoneal injection, selectively impairs the memory of certain spatial tasks. It is unknown whether these same results can be produced in the C57BL/6J mouse strain. Male C57BL/6J mice were trained in a spatial task in the Morris water maze. After training, an ethanol test was administered in which each mouse was given an injection of one of four randomly assigned doses: ethanol, at a dose of 1.25, 1.75, or 2.25 g/kg, or a saline control dose that remained constant at 1.75 g/kg. Thirty minutes after injection, the mice were given the spatial task. Next, the same mice were given training for a nonspatial task in the Morris water maze. After training, another ethanol test was administered. Again, the mice were randomly assigned one of the aforementioned doses. Thirty minutes after injections, the mice were given the nonspatial task. Results from Study 1, by using latency, showed that acute ethanol administration selectively impaired spatial memory (P<.05) at 1.75 and 2.25 g/kg doses, yet it failed to significantly impair nonspatial memory except at the 2.25 g/kg dose. Results from Study 2, by using path lengths, showed similar effects, in that acute ethanol administration selectively impaired spatial memory (P<.05) at the 2.25 g/kg dose, yet it failed to impair nonspatial memory at any dose. These findings demonstrate that acute ethanol administration selectively impairs spatial memory in C57BL/6J mice.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Double dissociation of social and environmental stimulation on spatial learning and reversal learning in rats.

Environmental enrichment induces structural and biochemical changes in the brains of mammals that correlate with improved learning and memory. Research in rats suggests that social compared to inanimate stimulation might affect behavior differently, by acting upon dissociable neural substrates. Here we tested this hypothesis at the behavioral level by examining whether social and inanimate stimulation affect spatial memory formation and non-spatial discrimination reversal learning selectively. Spatial memory formation is known to depend on hippocampal-neocortical pathways, whereas reversal learning depends primarily on prefrontal cortico-striatal pathways. Male Lister hooded rats were housed singly or in groups of three in either small barren or large enriched cages, from weaning onwards. After 10 weeks of differential housing, spatial learning and memory were examined in the Morris water maze, followed by a series of tactile and odour discriminations, including discrimination reversal, in a two-choice discrimination task. Regardless of inanimate stimulation, social deprivation affected neither the acquisition of simple or complex discriminations, nor spatial memory formation, but was associated with impaired reversal learning in the two-choice discrimination task. By contrast, inanimate deprivation, regardless of social stimulation, affected neither acquisition nor reversal of two-choice discriminations, but selectively delayed the acquisition of spatial memory in the Morris water maze. This is the first demonstration of a double dissociation of early social and inanimate stimulation on two distinct behavioural functions that are mediated by dissociable underlying neural pathways. These findings strengthen the view that social and inanimate stimulation act, at least in part, upon dissociable neural substrates.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Spatial orientation strategies in Morris-type virtual water task for humans.

The present study characterized frequent motion patterns (search strategies) that occurred during spatial navigation in a virtual maze. The research focused on identifying and characterizing some search strategies, the temporal progression of strategy-use, and their role in spatial performance. Participants were 112 undergraduate students (42 males and 70 females). We identified three search strategies that predicted spatial performance. Enfilading refers to an approach-withdrawal pattern of active exploration near a target location. Thigmotaxis refers to a search strategy that involves continuous contact with the circular wall of the maze. Visual scan involves active visual exploration while the subject remains in a fixed spatial location and turns round. In addition to identifying these motion patterns, some significant points of the spatial learning process were also detailed where strategies appeared to shift systematically. The applied search strategies in these transitional points have determined overall spatial performance.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Peripubertal anxiety profile can predict predisposition to spatial memory impairments following chronic stress.

We tested the hypothesis that peripubertal anxiety levels are predictive of the detrimental effects of chronic stress on hippocampal-dependent spatial memory. The anxiety levels of peripubertal male Sprague-Dawley rats (43 days old) were characterized using open field and elevated plus mazes, followed by chronic restraint stress for 6 h/day/21 days beginning in young adulthood (75 days). Following chronic stress treatment, rats were tested on the spatial Y-maze using two inter-trial interval levels of difficulty (4 h: 1 day post-chronic stress; 1 min: 2 days post-chronic stress). As expected, all groups displayed intact spatial memory in the less difficult 1 min version of the Y-maze. However, in the 4 h version of the Y-maze, chronically stressed high anxiety rats showed impaired spatial memory, while chronically stressed low anxiety and control (low and high anxiety) rats displayed intact spatial memory. Moreover, a month after chronic stress ended, high anxiety rats had significantly higher basal corticosterone levels than low anxiety rats (control and stress). These results indicate that peripubertal anxiety and chronic stress interact to influence hippocampal-dependent spatial memory in adulthood.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2006

Spatial learning in Long-Evans Hooded rats and C57BL/6J mice: different strategies for different performance.

Spatial learning abilities of rodents have been extensively used to explore the management of a wide range of cognitive and emotional processes such as learning, memory, attention and anxiety. Knowledge about the organization and processing of spatial learning has mainly been obtained in rats. Due to increasing generation of genetically modified mice, cognitive abilities of mice are now extensively tested. The present paper aimed at comparing spatial representation, learning and strategies in C57BL/6J mice and Long-Evans Hooded rats when subjected to the same spatial learning paradigm, i.e. learning a food location in a crossmaze. We also analyzed the influence of environmental richness on learning modalities in both species. Our results showed that rats and mice could exhibit similar spatial learning abilities in some circumstances. However, Long-Evans rats and C57BL/6J mice may set up different strategies depending on the availability of visual information within the environment. Rats' learning strategies mainly relied on distant visual cues and seemed more efficient than those used by mice as they needed less time than mice to solve the task. We emphasize that the strategies of mice are less robust and flexible than the ones set up by rats. Finally, the richness of the environment was shown to affect speed and quality of spatial learning in both species.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2005

Relational memory for object identity and spatial location in rats with lesions of perirhinal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus.

Previous studies dissociate medial temporal lobe regions using non-relational object versus relational spatial tasks. We compared a relational object identity task to the commonly used, relational spatial Morris water task. Lesions of perirhinal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus led to impaired performance on only the relational object preference task. Rats with perirhinal cortex and amygdala lesions performed normally on the Morris water task, but showed reduced perseveration in the correct quadrant on the probe trial. Rats with hippocampal damage were impaired on all measures of the Morris water task. Our findings demonstrate that perirhinal and amygdala damage creates impairments for relational tasks that rely on information processed by these structures (object identity and stimulus valence, respectively). In addition, these structures contribute non-essentially to performance of relational spatial tasks. The hippocampus is critical for all tasks that require the use of relational representations, regardless of whether the disambiguating information is provided by object identity or spatial arrangements. The current pattern of results suggests that the previous object-spatial dissociations among medial temporal lobe regions may be due to the relational nature of the spatial tasks versus the non-relational nature of the object tasks. Further, they illustrate that discrete dissociations among different types of processing may be an oversimplification.

Amygdala↗

PubMed2026

Unraveling lung cancer complexity: Spatial omics in tumor microenvironment characterization and precision medicine.

Heterogeneous tumor microenvironment (TME) in lung cancer plays a crucial role in disease progression and resistance to therapy. Despite advances in single-cell and bulk omics profiling, these methods often overlook spatial context, which is vital for understanding cell-cell interactions and regional heterogeneity. In recent years, spatial omics technologies-including spatial genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics-have revolutionized the ability to map molecular landscapes while maintaining tissue architecture. These advancements have become essential components of next-generation lung cancer management. By providing unprecedented resolution in characterizing the lung cancer TME, spatial omics could reveal prognostic and predictive biomarkers and identify new therapeutic vulnerabilities. This review will provide the first critical evaluation of spatial multi-omics approaches for lung cancer prognosis. It will also assess various integration strategies for multi-omics data to explore the clinical translational potential of these tools for therapy selection and patient stratification. Therefore, a deeper understanding of spatial omics technologies and their application in lung cancer can significantly improve precision diagnostics and therapeutic decision-making.

Lung cancer↗

PubMed2025

Integrating genomic and spatial analyses to describe tuberculosis transmission: a scoping review.

Tuberculosis remains a leading cause of infection-related mortality, and efforts to reduce its incidence have been hindered by an incomplete understanding of local Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission dynamics. Advances in pathogen sequencing and spatial analysis have created new opportunities to map M tuberculosis transmission patterns more precisely. In this scoping review, we searched for studies combining pathogen genetics and location data to analyse the spatial patterns of M tuberculosis transmission and identified 142 studies published between 1994 and 2024. Secular changes in genetic methods were observed, with genome sequencing approaches largely replacing lower-resolution genotyping methods since 2020. The included studies addressed four primary research questions: how are tuberculosis cases and M tuberculosis transmission clusters geographically distributed; do spatially concentrated M tuberculosis clusters exist, and where are these areas located; when spatial concentration occurs, what host, pathogen, or environmental factors contribute to these patterns; and do identifiable relationships exist between the spatial proximity of tuberculosis cases and the genetic similarity of the M tuberculosis isolates infecting these individuals? Collectively, in this Review, we examined the available study data, evaluated the analytical requirements for addressing these questions, and discussed opportunities and challenges for future research. We found that the integration of spatial and genomic data can inform a detailed understanding of local M tuberculosis transmission patterns, but improved study designs and new analytical methods to address gaps in sampling completeness and to integrate additional movement data are needed to fully realise the potential of these tools.

Humans↗

PubMed2004

A proposed architecture for the neural representation of spatial context.

The role of context in guiding animal behavior has attracted increasing attention in recent years, but little is known about what constitutes a context, nor how and where in the brain it is represented. Contextual stimuli can take many forms, but of particular importance are those that collectively define a particular place or situation. The representation of place has been linked to the hippocampus, because its principal neurons ('place cells') are spatially responsive; behavioral experiments also implicate this structure in the processing of contextual stimuli. Together, these findings suggest a hippocampal role in representing 'spatial context'. The present article outlines a proposed architecture for the encoding of spatial context in which spatial inputs to place cells are modulated (or 'gated') by non-spatial stimuli. We discuss recent experimental evidence that spatial context is population-coded, a property which could allow both discrimination between overlapping contexts and generalization across them, and thus provide a foundation for animals' capacity for flexible context-linked place learning.

Animals↗

PubMed2004

Positive effects of deprenyl and estradiol on spatial memory and oxidant stress in aged female rat brains.

Increasing age decreases spatial learning and memory. Spatial learning is coordinated with different brain regions. Since the oxidative damage may play a role in the aging process, including the associated cognitive decline, age-related impairment in spatial learning and memory may be alleviated by antioxidant treatment. The present study examined the effects of the monoamine oxidase B inhibitor L-deprenyl, alone and in combination with estradiol, on spatial memory using the Morris water maze and oxidant stress in aged female rat brains. We demonstrated that co-administration of deprenyl and estradiol caused a synergistic effect on spatial memory. However, use of either deprenyl or estradiol alone increased antioxidant enzyme activities in brain and reduced lipid peroxidation. Therefore, positive effects of deprenyl and estradiol on spatial memory may occur due not only to their antioxidant activities but also to the different actions.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2005

A comparison of egocentric and allocentric age-dependent spatial learning in the beagle dog.

Spatial discriminations can be performed using either egocentric information based on body position or allocentric information based on the position of landmarks in the environment. Beagle dogs ranging from 2 to 16 years of age were tested for their ability to learn a novel egocentric spatial discrimination task that used two identical blocks paired in three possible spatial positions (i.e. left, center and right). Dogs were rewarded for responding to an object furthest to either their left or right side. Therefore, when the center location was used, it was correct on half of the trials and incorrect on the other half. Upon successful acquisition of the task, the reward contingencies were reversed, and the dogs were rewarded for responding to the opposite side. A subset of dogs was also tested on an allocentric spatial discrimination task, landmark discrimination. Egocentric spatial reversal learning and allocentric discrimination learning both showed a significant age-dependent decline, while initial egocentric learning appeared to be age-insensitive. Intra-subject correlation analyses revealed a significant relationship between egocentric reversal learning and allocentric learning. However, the correlation only accounted for a small proportion of the variance, suggesting that although there might be some common mechanism underlying acquisition of the two tasks, additional unique neural substrates were involved depending on whether allocentric or egocentric spatial information processing was required.

Aging↗

PubMed2003

Spatial working memory as an endophenotype for schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Spatial working memory impairments are among the neurocognitive deficits that may mark genetic predisposition toward schizophrenia. We previously reported that impairment on the spatial span subtask of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised increased in a dose-dependent manner with increasing genetic predisposition toward schizophrenia in a sample of discordant twins; however, it remains to be determined whether these deficits reflect difficulties with encoding, maintenance, manipulation, time-tagging of visual spatial information, storage capacity, or complex motor response. METHODS: We developed a spatial delayed response task in which memory set size was parametrically varied, holding constant manipulation and decision processes. We then reassessed 80 of the previously studied twins (17 probands with 8 monozygotic co-twins and 13 dizygotic co-twins, and 42 healthy twins). RESULTS: The spatial delayed response task was sensitive to genetic loading for schizophrenia but did not provide evidence for capacity limitations in probands or their co-twins. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that deficits in the encoding or storage aspects of short-term spatial mnemonic processing may be an effective endophenotypic marker for schizophrenia.

Female↗