Search PubMed⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Spatial Behavior”

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.

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

At least 1,477 records · Page 82Linked to original sources

Deficits on conditional associative-learning tasks after frontal- and temporal-lobe lesions in man.

Patients with unilateral frontal- or temporal-lobe excisions were tested on a spatial and a nonspatial conditional associative task. These tasks required the learning of arbitrary associations between a set of stimuli and a set of responses. Patients with excisions from the left or right frontal cortex were severely impaired in learning both tasks. Patients with left or right temporal-lobe excisions that did not involve extensive damage to the hippocampal region were not impaired, whilst those with more radical involvement of the hippocampal region exhibited deficits that were material-specific and varied with the side of the lesion.

Adolescent↗

Differential lateralization for positive and negative emotion in the human brain: EEG spectral analysis.

The present experiment utilized EEG spectral analysis to investigate lateralization for emotional processes in the human brain. In frontal zones, a differential lateralization for positive and negative emotion was observed, with relative left-hemispheric activation (as measured by decreases in alpha abundance) for positive emotions and relative right-hemispheric activation for negative emotions. In parietal zones, a differential lateralization for verbal and spatial processes was observed, with relative left-hemispheric activation for verbal questions and relative right-hemispheric activation for spatial questions. Examination of EEG bands other than alpha (i.e. delta, theta, beta, and total power) suggested that emotional and cognitive processes are further distinguished by different EEG spectral patterns.

Adolescent↗

Effects of induced anxiety and question content on the direction and frequency of lateral eye movements.

Lateral eye movements were recorded electrically as 39 right-handed adults attempted to answer 48 questions that had been rated for anxiety content, visual imagery and difficulty. Subjects were assigned randomly to either a high or low anxiety treatment group. The anxiety treatment increased ocular motility and visuospatial questioning decreased motility, but neither variable had a significant effect on the direction to which the eyes were moved. The anxiety content of questions affected neither the number nor direction of gaze shifts. The results fail to support previous claims that lateral eye movements reflect the cerebral lateralization of emotion.

Adolescent↗

Sex role and spatial ability: an EEG study.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between sex role and spatial ability using both performance and electrocortical (EEG) measures. Two hundred and fifty four subjects were given the Differential Aptitudes Space Relations Test and a short form of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) which gives an indication of sex role. From this initial group, 40 males and females were chosen based on sex role scores. These subjects were asked to solve additional visuo-spatial problems. Bilateral EEG measures were taken from the frontal and parietal areas. The results indicate that frontal EEG measures are related to the sex role orientation of the subjects whereas parietal EEG measures are associated with performance on the visuo-spatial task for males but not females. These results suggest that frontal and parietal EEG measures reflect different processes. Counter to the traditional hypothesis, performance on the visuo-spatial task was negatively related to masculine sex-role orientation suggesting that factors which influence spatial processing go beyond biological sex.

Brain↗

Interhemispheric integration of information in a surface estimation task.

Normal subjects were asked to estimate the total surface of two black spots presented tachistoscopically, either both to the right or both to the left visual field, or bilaterally to either visual field. Performance was highest with unilateral left visual field presentation and lowest with bilateral presentation of the spots. Interhemispheric integration varied with the quantitative relation between the stimuli in the left and right visual fields. Errors may be due in part to an insufficient cooperation of the left hemisphere and/or to an ignorance of the right hemisphere and/or to an unreliable transfer by the cerebral commissures.

Adult↗

Mechanisms of visuomotor coordination: a study in normal and brain-damaged subjects.

This paper reviews the role of vision in controlling pointing and reaching movements in man. Studies of visuomotor behaviour in normal subjects allow the identification of several levels for describing organization of visuomotor control. The relative contribution of central (programming) and peripheral (feedback) mechanisms; the role of the eye-head coordinated position as a reference for controlling accuracy and direction of movements; and the relative independence of input-output channels in controlling proximal and distal segments of the musculature. These levels represent a useful framework for understanding pathological disruption of visuomotor control produced by cortical lesions.

Biophysical Phenomena↗

Cerebral lateralization and handedness and their effects on verbal and spatial reasoning.

Consistent and inconsistent left- and right-handed male subjects completed four tests each of verbal and spatial reasoning. They also participated in tachistoscopic measures of verbal and spatial lateralization--consonant-vowel-consonant recognition and dot enumeration, respectively. The consistent handedness groups displayed significantly more lateralized patterns of cerebral organization that the inconsistent handedness groups. Increased lateralization was associated with superior performance on measures of spatial reasoning, but not on measures of verbal reasoning. Results are interpreted in terms of a competition hypothesis. No differences were found between the handedness groups on either the verbal or spatial reasoning tests.

Adolescent↗

A relationship between gonadotropins and visuospatial function.

Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) levels were negatively correlated with visuospatial function in two successive testing sessions in 32 young adult men. Men with high concentrations of FSH performed poorly on three-dimensional tests and tests of point localization. Men with low concentrations tended to perform better. Luteinizing Hormone (LH) tended to correlate positively with verbal/sequential skills and with two of the visuospatial skills for one session; testosterone was positively correlated with one spatial test. Multiple regression between the average performance on visuospatial tests and the three hormones produced Rs of 0.67 and 0.60, accounting for 39% and 29% of the variance, respectively, in Sessions 1 and 2. In women, the hormonal/behavior relationships were less clear although in many ways similar. For example, FSH was negatively correlated with one visuospatial test but only after the effects of estradiol and progesterone were partialled out. FSH was positively correlated with word fluency as was LH. With respect to sex differences women were poorer than men on the visuospatial tests and better on verbal fluency which is consistent with women's generally higher FSH levels and the negative relationship between FSH and visuospatial skills and the positive relationship with fluency.

Adolescent↗

Pointing movement in an artificial perturbing inertial field: a prospective paradigm for motor control study.

The present experiment focused on spatial accuracy and kinematics of fast pointing movements submitted to a multi-directional inertial perturbation. Pointing movements were performed without direct visual control, on a rotating armchair adding centrifugal and Coriolis forces to the natural displacement of the arm. The simultaneous action of these two forces induced a perturbation of the arm displacement both in amplitude and direction. Results showed that these two parameters were adjusted differently according to their own temporal constraint. Movement amplitude was adjusted on-line from the very first trial through the amendment of the whole acceleration pattern. Conversely, adjustment to directional perturbation was progressively achieved through several movement rehearsals. This correction appeared to be primarily due to a modification of the initial orientation of the arm trajectory, based seemingly on kinaesthetic knowledge from previous performances. The amendment of spatial parameters during motor response in the perturbing environment was discussed with an emphasis on the involvement of the cerebellum in reaching movement and the learning process.

Adult↗

Hemispheric asymmetry of arterial blood flow velocity changes during verbal and visuospatial tasks.

Changes in arterial blood flow velocity induced by cognitive activity were measured by simultaneous bilateral transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) of the posterior and the middle cerebral artery. The finding of a robust left hemisphere dominance for verbal tasks but of an inconsistent right hemisphere dominance for visuospatial tasks obtained in an earlier study [13], in which TCD measurement had been restricted to the middle cerebral arteries, was confirmed. At the same time, it could be demonstrated that the failure to find the expected right hemisphere dominance for tasks of spatial visualization and mental rotation extended to the TCD measurement of the posterior cerebral arteries.

Adult↗

Topographical disorientation following unilateral temporal lobe lesions in humans.

Studies of the non-human temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus, confirm its significant role in learning and memory, particularly allocentric spatial mapping of the environment. The role of the human temporal lobes in topographical orientation was investigated by examining the formation of representations of a large-scale real-world environment after unilateral left and right temporal lobe surgery. Patients and normal control subjects viewed videotape presentations of overlapping routes through a novel urban area. Topographical orientation was then assessed across a range of parameters. Right temporal lobe lesions alone gave rise to deficits in making proximity judgements. However, on all other topographical orientation tasks both right and left temporal lobe lesion groups were impaired relative to the normal control group, but the two patient groups did not differ significantly from each other. These findings suggest that such is the nature of remembering and way-finding in the environment that the integrity of both human temporal lobes is required.

Adult↗

Radial maze in the water tank: an aversively motivated spatial working memory task.

An 8-arm radial maze with 40 X 40 X 12 cm channels was inserted into a circular tank (120 cm in diameter, 60 cm high) filled 30 cm deep with 25 degrees C opaque water. Rats (n = 13) had to escape from the central area of the maze (30 cm in diameter) onto an invisible bench (1 cm below water surface) at the far end of each channel. Twenty sec after each choice the bench was collapsed and the animal was forced to choose again until all 8 channels had been visited. From the very beginning rats performed better than chance. The acquisition and performance of this aversively motivated radial maze test is similar as in conventional elevated 8-arm radial mazes.

Animals↗

Formation of a place learning-set by the rat: a new paradigm for neurobehavioral studies.

The Morris water swimming task provides an ideal way of studying spatial navigational abilities in rats. It requires that rats swim to find a platform located just below the surface of the water in a swimming pool, and rats will learn and perform the task readily without being subject to nutrient deprivation. A novel adaption of the task, in which rats are shown to form a place learning-set, is described in the present paper. The learning-set paradigm can be used for the repeated evaluation of spatial navigation abilities in the same animals over a long period of time. The procedure is based on the finding that once trained, rats can acquire a new place response each day. Each new response can be learned within one or two trials, given within the time period of a few seconds, and once acquired, the response can be retained for a number of days, or until the problem is changed. The procedure can be usefully applied to the study of recovery of function following brain damage, the study of memory processes following brain damage, the changes in memory processes accompanying aging, or it can be used for the screening of pharmacological compounds, etc. The technique may be especially useful for the study of the performance of individual rats.

Animals↗

Effects of alcohol on radial maze performance in rats.

Working memory for spatial information was studied in an eight-arm radial maze by imposing a 15 min delay following an injection of either saline (0.9%) or 10% alcohol (1.25 g/kg) between an animal's fourth and fifth arm choices. Exposure to intoxicating doses of alcohol did not significantly influence the number of errors for the first 4 arm choices, but did increase the errors on the final set of arm choices following the delay and treatment. Moreover, alcohol injections significantly increased the mean response time to complete the first 4 arm choices over the 10 days of testing, suggesting a conditioned aversion to the maze as a consequence of the noxious effects of the alcohol treatments.

Animals↗

A simple rapid swim test to determine spatial preference in the rat.

A swim test is described for the evaluation of spatial preference in untreated male rats. The test is rapid, objective and simple to perform and was able to distinguish right-left preferences in 47 rats. It is encouraged that the swim test be compared to or used in conjunction with other spatial preference tests.

Animals↗

Estrus-associated decrements in a water maze task are limited to acquisition.

To ascertain whether gonadal hormones have activational influences on spatial ability, the relationship between estrous cycle, sex differences and water maze performance was examined in two studies. In the first study, the performance of females at different cycle phases was compared within females and to that of males. All animals were naive to the task. Similar to other studies, females had longer latencies and distances to reach the water maze platform than males. This sex difference was statistically significant only in comparisons of estrous females and males, not in comparisons of diestrous females and males. To determine whether estrus-associated decrements in acquisition of the water maze task extended to postacquisition performance, a second study assesessed performance of ovariectomized rats--trained to criterion in the task--whose cycle phases were mimicked by exogenous hormones. In the initial trial, "estrous" animals had longer latencies to reach the platform than "diestrous" and ovariectomized animals. In subsequent trials, no hormone-dependent differences in performance were observed. Taken together, the results indicate a modest association between phase of estrous cycle, acquisition, and postacquisition performance when the task is novel. These findings suggest estrus-associated decrements in acquisition may account for previous discrepancies among studies of sex differences in spatial ability.

Animals↗