AUTHOR=Bohbot Veronique D., McKenzie Sam , Konishi Kyoko , Fouquet Celine , Kurdi Vanessa , Schachar Russell , Boivin Michel , Robaey Philippe TITLE=Virtual navigation strategies from childhood to senescence: evidence for changes across the life span JOURNAL=Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience VOLUME=4 YEAR=2012 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2012.00028 DOI=10.3389/fnagi.2012.00028 ISSN=1663-4365 ABSTRACT=
This study sought to investigate navigational strategies across the life span, by testing 8-years old children to 80-years old healthy older adults on the 4 on 8 virtual maze (4/8VM). The 4/8VM was previously developed to assess spontaneous navigational strategies, i.e., hippocampal-dependent spatial strategies (navigation by memorizing relationships between landmarks) versus caudate nucleus-dependent response strategies (memorizing a series of left and right turns from a given starting position). With the 4/8VM, we previously demonstrated greater fMRI activity and gray matter in the hippocampus of spatial learners relative to response learners. A sample of 599 healthy participants was tested in the current study. Results showed that 84.4% of children, 46.3% of young adults, and 39.3% of older adults spontaneously used spatial strategies (