Real-world navigation requires movement of the body through space, producing a continuous stream of visual and self-motion signals, including proprioceptive, vestibular, and motor efference cues. These multimodal cues are integrated to form a spatial cognitive map, an abstract, amodal representation of the environment. How the brain combines these disparate inputs and the relative importance of these inputs to cognitive map formation and recall are key unresolved questions in cognitive neuroscience. Recent advances in virtual reality technology allow participants to experience body-based cues when virtually navigating, and thus it is now possible to consider these issues in new detail. Here, we discuss a recent publication that addresses some of these issues, D. J. Huffman and A. D. Ekstrom (A modality-independent network underlies the retrieval of large-scale spatial environments in the human brain. Neuron, 104, 611–622, 2019). In doing so, we also review recent progress in the study of human spatial cognition and raise several questions that might be addressed in future studies.

现实世界的导航需要身体在空间中移动，产生连续的视觉和自我运动信号流，包括本体感觉、前庭和运动传导信号。这些多模态线索整合起来形成空间认知图，这是环境的抽象、非模态表示。大脑如何结合这些不同的输入以及这些输入对认知图形成和回忆的相对重要性是认知神经科学中尚未解决的关键问题。虚拟现实技术的最新进展使参与者能够在虚拟导航时体验基于身体的线索，因此现在可以更详细地考虑这些问题。在这里，我们讨论最近发表的一份解决其中一些问题的出版物，DJ Huffman 和 AD神经元， 104，611-622，2019 ）。在此过程中，我们还回顾了人类空间认知研究的最新进展，并提出了未来研究中可能解决的几个问题。