Spatial memory

In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial memory is that part of the memory responsible for the recording of information about one's environment and spatial orientation. For example, a person's spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city, just as a rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze. It is often argued that in both humans and animals, spatial memories are summarized as a cognitive map. Spatial memory has representations within working, short-term memory and long-term memory. Research indicates that there are specific areas of the brain associated with spatial memory. Many methods are used for measuring spatial memory in children, adults, and animals. In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial memory is that part of the memory responsible for the recording of information about one's environment and spatial orientation. For example, a person's spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city, just as a rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze. It is often argued that in both humans and animals, spatial memories are summarized as a cognitive map. Spatial memory has representations within working, short-term memory and long-term memory. Research indicates that there are specific areas of the brain associated with spatial memory. Many methods are used for measuring spatial memory in children, adults, and animals. Short-term memory (STM) can be described as a system allowing one to temporarily store and manage information that is necessary to complete complex cognitive tasks. Tasks which employ short-term memory include learning, reasoning, and comprehension. Spatial memory is a cognitive process that enables a person to remember different locations as well as spatial relations between objects. This allows one to remember where an object is in relation to another object; for instance, allowing someone to navigate through a familiar city. Spatial memories are said to form after a person has already gathered and processed sensory information about her or his environment. Working memory (WM) can be described as a limited capacity system that allows one to temporarily store and process information. This temporary store enables one to complete or work on complex tasks while being able to keep information in mind. For instance, the ability to work on a complicated mathematical problem utilizes one's working memory. One highly influential theory of WM is the Baddeley and Hitch multi-component model of working memory. The most recent version of this model suggests that there are four subcomponents to WM, namely the phonological loop; the visuo-spatial sketchpad; the central executive; and the episodic buffer. One component of this model, the visuo-spatial sketchpad, is said to be responsible for the temporary storage, maintenance, and manipulation of both visual and spatial information. In contrast to the multi-component model, some researchers believe that STM should be viewed as a unitary construct. In this respect, visual, spatial, and verbal information are thought to be organized by levels of representation rather than the type of store to which they belong. Within the literature, it is suggested that further research into the fractionation of STM and WM be explored. However, much of the research into the visuo-spatial memory construct have been conducted in accordance to the paradigm advanced by Baddeley and Hitch. Research into the exact function of the visuo-spatial sketchpad has indicated that both spatial short-term memory and working memory are dependent on executive resources and are not entirely distinct. For instance, performance on a working memory but not on a short-term memory task was affected by articulatory suppression suggesting that impairment on the spatial task was caused by the concurrent performance on a task that had extensive use of executive resources. Results have also found that performances were impaired on STM and WM tasks with executive suppression. This illustrates how, within the visuo-spatial domain, both STM and WM require similar utility of the central executive. Additionally, during a spatial visualisation task (which is related to executive functioning and not STM or WM) concurrent executive suppression impaired performance indicating that the effects were due to common demands on the central executive and not short-term storage. The researchers concluded with the explanation that the central executive employs cognitive strategies enabling participants to both encode and maintain mental representations during short-term memory tasks. Although studies suggest that the central executive is intimately involved in a number of spatial tasks, the exact way in which they are connected remains to be seen. Spatial memory recall is built upon a hierarchical structure. That is to say that people remember the general layout of a particular space and then 'cue target locations' located within that spatial set. This paradigm includes an ordinal scale of features that an individual must attend to in order to inform his or her cognitive map. Recollection of spatial details is a top-down procedure that requires an individual to recall the superordinate features of a cognitive map, followed by the ordinate and subordinate features. Thus, two spatial features are prominent in navigating a path: general layout and landmark orienting (Kahana et al., 2006).