Neural correlates of geographic and spatial thinking
Schinazi, V.R., & Thrash, T. (2018). Neural correlates of geographic and spatial thinking. In Montello, D. (Ed.), Handbook of Behavioral and Cognitive Geography (pp.154-176). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
In 2014, neuroscientists John O’Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I. Moser were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries related to the brain’s positioning system. They found place and grid cells in rats’ medial temporal lobes (MTL) that responded to position and orientation information at local and global scales (Hafting et al. 2005; O’Keefe and Dostrovsky 1971). This series of discoveries provided a comprehensive framework for understanding spatial behavior that cognitive scientists had been seeking at least since Tolman’s (1948) original experiments on rat navigation. At the same time, this research overlaps conceptually with the four geographic primitives identified by Golledge (1995): location, magnitude, identity, and space–time or movement. These findings suggest that there is potential for collaboration between neuroscience and geography. However, the extent to which these two disciplines have effectively communicated thus far suggests a tenuous relationship at best.