The Lateralization of Spatial and Temporal Components of Navigation in Humans

Abstract

Episodic memory plays a major role in the navigational abilities of humans. The key concepts of episodic memory are spatial- and temporal memory. These cognitive functions allow people use spatial and temporal cues to explore new places and find their way without the use of navigational aids. Previous research focused mainly on finding the neural correlates of these two concepts. Many of these results also suggested that the right hemisphere was most important for the processing of spatial cues, while the left hemisphere was suggested to be most important for the processing of temporal cues. The current study tried to provide more evidence for this suggested lateralization. It was hypothesized that the right hemisphere is dominant for spatial navigation while the left hemisphere is hypothesized to be dominant for temporal navigation. A video of a ‘walk’ through a maze was developed along with two visual half field tasks to determine possible lateralization. Both tasks measured reaction times and accuracy for stimuli presented in the left visual field and stimuli presented in the right visual field. The results are contradicting. It was expected that participants would be faster and more accurate on left visual field performance (LVFP) on the spatial task and on right visual field performance (RVFP) on the temporal tasks. On both tasks, participants were equally fast on LVFP and RVFP. However, they were significantly more accurate for LVFP on the spatial task and for RVFP on the temporal task. Based on the results, it impossible to provide a clear answer to the question whether the spatial component and temporal component of navigation are lateralized to a certain point. Based on accuracy results, it seems they might be. Future research should attempt to provide a more definite answer to the question if spatial and temporal component are in fact lateralized.