Moving our body through space is fundamental to human navigation; however, technical and physical limitations have hindered our ability to study the role of these body-based cues experimentally. We recently designed an experiment using novel immersive virtual-reality technology, which allowed us to tightly control the availability of body-based cues to determine how these cues influence human spatial memory [Huffman, D. J., & Ekstrom, A. D. A modality-independent network underlies the retrieval of large-scale spatial environments in the human brain. Neuron, 104, 611–622, 2019]. Our analysis of behavior and fMRI data revealed a similar pattern of results across a range of body-based cues conditions, thus suggesting that participants likely relied primarily on vision to form and retrieve abstract, holistic representations of the large-scale environments in our experiment. We ended our article by discussing a number of caveats and future directions for research on the role of body-based cues in human spatial memory. Here, we reiterate and expand on this discussion, and we use a commentary in this issue by A. Steel, C. E. Robertson, and J. S. Taube (Current promises and limitations of combined virtual reality and functional magnetic resonance imaging research in humans: A commentary on Huffman and Ekstrom (2019). Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2020) as a helpful discussion point regarding some of the questions that we think will be the most interesting in the coming years. We highlight the exciting possibility of taking a more naturalistic approach to study the behavior, cognition, and neuroscience of navigation. Moreover, we share the hope that researchers who study navigation in humans and nonhuman animals will synergize to provide more rapid advancements in our understanding of cognition and the brain.

在太空中移动我们的身体是人类导航的基础。然而，技术和物理限制阻碍了我们通过实验研究这些基于身体的线索的作用的能力。我们最近设计了一个使用新颖的沉浸式虚拟现实技术的实验，这使我们能够严格控制基于身体的线索的可用性，以确定这些线索如何影响人类空间记忆 [Huffman, DJ, & Ekstrom, AD 一个与模态无关的网络基础人脑中大规模空间环境的检索。神经元, 104, 611–622, 2019]。我们对行为和 fMRI 数据的分析揭示了一系列基于身体的线索条件下的类似结果模式，因此表明参与者可能主要依靠视觉来形成和检索我们实验中大规模环境的抽象、整体表示。我们通过讨论基于身体的线索在人类空间记忆中的作用研究的一些注意事项和未来方向来结束我们的文章。在这里，我们重申并扩展了这一讨论，我们使用了 A. Steel、CE Robertson 和 JS Taube 在这个问题上的评论（当前的组合虚拟现实和人类功能磁共振成像研究的前景和局限性：评论Huffman 和 Ekstrom (2019).认知神经科学杂志, 2020) 作为关于我们认为未来几年最有趣的一些问题的有用讨论点。我们强调了采用更自然的方法来研究导航的行为、认知和神经科学的令人兴奋的可能性。此外，我们希望研究人类和非人类动物导航的研究人员能够协同合作，在我们对认知和大脑的理解方面提供更快速的进步。