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Spatial memory
 
 
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In cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that investigates internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language.The school of thought arising from this approach is known as cognitivism which is interested in how people mentally represent information processing....
 and neuroscience
Neuroscience

Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. The Society for Neuroscience was founded in 1969, but the study of the brain started a long time ago....
, spatial memory is the part of memory
Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of mnemonic....
 responsible for recording information about one's environment and its 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
Maze

A maze is a complex tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. In everyday speech, both maze and labyrinth denote a complex and confusing series of pathways, but technically the maze is distinguished from the labyrinth....
. It is often argued that a person's, or an animal's, spatial memories are summarised in a cognitive map
Cognitive map

Cognitive maps, mental maps, mind maps, cognitive models, or mental models are a type of cognition composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual can acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment....
.

Spatial memories are formed after an organism
Organism

In biology, an organism is any life thing . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimulus , reproduction, growth and developmental biology, and maintenance of homeostasis as a stable whole....
 gathers and processes sensory
Sense

Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception....
 information about its surroundings (especially vision
Visual perception

Visual perception is the ability to interpret information from visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight or vision....
 and proprioception
Proprioception

Proprioception ; from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own" and perception) is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body....
).






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In cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a branch of psychology that investigates internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language.The school of thought arising from this approach is known as cognitivism which is interested in how people mentally represent information processing....
 and neuroscience
Neuroscience

Neuroscience is a field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. The Society for Neuroscience was founded in 1969, but the study of the brain started a long time ago....
, spatial memory is the part of memory
Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of mnemonic....
 responsible for recording information about one's environment and its 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
Maze

A maze is a complex tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. In everyday speech, both maze and labyrinth denote a complex and confusing series of pathways, but technically the maze is distinguished from the labyrinth....
. It is often argued that a person's, or an animal's, spatial memories are summarised in a cognitive map
Cognitive map

Cognitive maps, mental maps, mind maps, cognitive models, or mental models are a type of cognition composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual can acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment....
.

Spatial memories are formed after an organism
Organism

In biology, an organism is any life thing . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimulus , reproduction, growth and developmental biology, and maintenance of homeostasis as a stable whole....
 gathers and processes sensory
Sense

Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception....
 information about its surroundings (especially vision
Visual perception

Visual perception is the ability to interpret information from visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight or vision....
 and proprioception
Proprioception

Proprioception ; from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own" and perception) is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body....
). In general, mammal
Mammal

Mammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose name is derived from their distinctive feature, mammary glands, with which they feed their young....
s require a functioning hippocampus
Hippocampus

The hippocampus is a brain structure located inside the medial temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex, and therefore is part of the telencephalon ....
 (particularly area CA1) in order to form and process memories about space. There is some evidence that human
Human

A human being, also human or man, is a member of a species of bipedalism primates in the family Hominidae . Mitochondrial DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in east Africa about 200,000 years ago....
 spatial memory is strongly tied to the right hemisphere
Cerebral hemisphere

A cerebral hemisphere is defined as one of the two regions of the brain that are delineated by the body's Anatomical_position#Median_and_sagittal_plane, ....
 of the brain
Brain

The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as cnidarian and echinoderm have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all....
 .

Spatial learning requires both NMDA
NMDA receptor

The NMDA receptor is an ionotropic receptor for glutamate . Activation of NMDA receptors results in the opening of an ion channel that is nonselective to ion....
 and AMPA receptor
AMPA receptor

The alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor is a non-NMDA-type ionotropic receptor transmembrane receptor for glutamate that mediates fast synapse transmission in the central nervous system ....
s, consolidation requires NMDA receptors, and the retrieval of spatial memories requires AMPA receptors . In rodents, spatial memory has been shown to covary with the size of a part of the hippocampal mossy fiber
Mossy fiber

In neuroscience, the term fiber describes a bundle of axons projecting from one group of neurons in a specific area to another. The term may refer to one of two specific mossy fiber locations, which share little similarity aside from their name:...
 projection.

The study of spatial memory provides valuable information about the type of complex processes which occurs in humans. It gives insight, into complex procedures. For example, species such as the grey squirrel or Clark's Nutcracker
Clark's Nutcracker

The Clark's Nutcracker , is a large passerine bird, in the family Corvidae. It is slightly smaller than its Eurasian relative Spotted Nutcracker ....
, which are scatter hoarders (making numerous small caches, usually of nuts) show a remarkable ability to return to their caches months later. Such species often have a larger hippocampus, relative to overall brain size, than related non-hoarding species. Spatial memory is also important in animal migration, and in foraging in complex environments with many different food sources which become available in different seasons, the situation that faces many frugivorous primate
Primate

A primate is a member of the biological order Primates , the group that contains lemurs, the Aye-aye, Lorisidaes, galagos, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes, with the last category including humans....
s.

Important Cortical Regions

  • Prefrontal cortex
    Prefrontal cortex

    The prefrontal cortex is the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, lying in front of the primary motor cortex and premotor cortex areas....
  • Retrosplenial cortex
  • Posterior parietal cortex
    Posterior parietal cortex

    The posterior parietal cortex is a portion of the parietal lobe which manipulates mental images, and integrates sensory and motor portions of the brain....
  • Perirhinal cortex
    Perirhinal cortex

    Perirhinal cortex is a cortical region in the medial temporal lobe that is made up of Brodmann area Brodmann area 35 and Brodmann area 36. In rats, it is located along and Dorsum to the rhinal sulcus....
  • Entorhinal cortex
    Entorhinal cortex

    The entorhinal cortex is an important memory center in the brain. The EC forms the main input to the hippocampus and is responsible for the pre-processing of the input signals....
  • Hippocampus
    Hippocampus

    The hippocampus is a brain structure located inside the medial temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex, and therefore is part of the telencephalon ....