Name: Paulina Maxim

Master’s Thesis Proposal Meeting
Date: Friday, July 1, 2022
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: https://zoom.us/j/92482560138?pwd=Y3Noc01RdnpNMFQweWdqS05SQWZ3UT09

Meeting ID: 924 8256 0138

Passcode: Q7MGdA

Advisor:
Thackery Brown, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Thesis Committee Members: 

Thackery Brown, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Scott Moffat, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Mark Wheeler, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)

Title: Environment Schema Influences in Spatial Navigation: An fMRI Study

Abstract: Navigating our environment is a ubiquitous aspect of our daily lives. I adopt the theory that humans utilize “schemas” as memory aids during navigation. In the traditional sense, a schema is an organized mnemonic “network” of information based on associative connections across memories of experiences, and into which novel experiences can be integrated as we continue to acquire new knowledge about our world (Bartlett, 1932). Particularly, the neural “implementation” of schemas is an active area of debate. Rodent research typically associates the hippocampus with spatial schemas, however, other non-spatial research emphasizes the role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and suggests it competes with hippocampal “episodic” memory. When it comes to spatial navigation, two open questions are: 1) How does the hippocampus compare to mPFC contributions during human schema-based navigation? 2) How do spatial schemas contribute to planning versus active navigation? The proposed study will test the effectiveness of retrieving schematic representations of distinct navigational instances and will examine when one might rely on these schemas while performing a spatial navigation task. By conducting a mix of whole-brain univariate and multivariate analyses, I will test theories of how the hippocampus and the mPFC work together – balancing between episodic and schematic memories rather than treating memories in the same way.