Coupling behavioral measures and brain imaging in naturalistic, ecological conditions is key to comprehend the neural bases of spatial navigation. This highly-integrative function encompasses sensorimotor, cognitive, and executive processes that jointly mediate active exploration and spatial learning. However, most neuroimaging approaches in humans are based on static, motion constrained paradigms and they do not account for all these processes, in particular multisensory integration. Following the Mobile Brain/Body Imaging approach, we aimed to explore the cortical correlates of landmark-based navigation in actively behaving young adults, solving a Y-maze task in immersive virtual reality. EEG analysis identified a set of brain areas matching state-of-the-art brain imaging literature of landmark-based navigation. Spatial behavior in mobile conditions additionally involved sensorimotor areas related to motor execution and proprioception usually overlooked in static fMRI paradigms. Expectedly, we located a cortical source in or near the posterior cingulate, in line with the engagement of the retrosplenial complex in spatial reorientation. Consistent with its role in visuo-spatial processing and coding, we observed an alpha power desynchronization while participants gathered visual information. We also hypothesized behavior-dependent modulations of the cortical signal during navigation. Despite finding few differences between the encoding and retrieval phases of the task, we identified transient time-frequency patterns attributed, for instance, to attentional demand, as reflected in the alpha/gamma range, or memory workload in the delta/theta range. We confirmed that combining mobile high-density EEG and biometric measures can help unravel the brain structures and the neural modulations subtending ecological landmark-based navigation.

中文翻译：

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高密度脑电图的基于地标的导航的移动大脑/身体成像

在自然，生态条件下，将行为措施与大脑成像相结合是理解空间导航的神经基础的关键。这种高度集成的功能包括感觉运动，认知和执行过程，共同协调主动探索和空间学习。然而，人类中大多数神经影像学方法都是基于静态的，受运动限制的范例，它们并不能说明所有这些过程，尤其是多感觉整合。遵循移动脑部/身体成像方法，我们的目的是在活跃的年轻成年人中探索基于地标的导航的皮层相关性，从而解决沉浸式虚拟现实中的Y迷宫任务。脑电图分析确定了一组与基于地标的导航技术的最新脑成像文献相匹配的脑区域。移动条件下的空间行为还涉及与运动执行和本体感觉有关的感觉运动区域，通常在静态功能磁共振成像范式中被忽略。可以预期，我们将后背带状或附近的皮质源定位在了后脾复合物在空间重新定向中的作用。与它在视觉空间处理和编码中的作用一致，我们在参与者收集视觉信息时观察到alpha功率去同步。我们还假设导航过程中皮质信号的行为相关调制。尽管在任务的编码和检索阶段之间发现很少的差异，但我们确定了瞬态时频模式，例如，这归因于注意力需求（如alpha / gamma范围或delta / theta范围中的内存工作量所示）。