Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC

1 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Behavior

Assessing Human Spatial Navigation in a Virtual Space and its Sensitivity to Exercise

Alana J. Smith¹, Noor Tasnim², Zach Psaras³, Daphne Gyamfi⁴, Krishna Makani⁴, Wendy A. Suzuki³, Julia C. Basso^1,4,5

¹School of Neuroscience, Virginia Tech, ²Graduate Program in Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health, Virginia Tech, ³Center for Neural Science, New York University, ⁴Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, Virginia Tech, ⁵Center for Health Behaviors Research, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC

Here, we present a novel, brief, and active spatial navigation task that assesses both spatial navigation and episodic memory ability. Importantly, spatial navigation and episodic memory were associated with one another, and this task demonstrated sensitivity to exercise.