Varieties of Spatial Cognition

Spatial cognition is not one, but many things. The variety of spatial goals an organism must attain is apparently matched by a variety of neural systems. These systems, and some aspects of their emergence during development, are the concerns of this chapter. Modern systems neuroscience generally holds to the view that the brain is organized into a set of “modules,” each of which is concerned with processing and probably storing information of a certain kind, for example, spatial, verbal, and temporal, (cf. Nadel & Wexler, 1985). By extension, neural systems concerned with “space” could be viewed in terms of the kind of spatial information they represent and process. In general, we would expect neural representational systems to be organized around the kinds of information animals need to function in the world. Spatial systems might then be expected to focus on the kinds of information demanded by the organism’s spatial functions. And what might those functions be? First, and perhaps most primitively, animals organize their movements with respect to the frame of reference provided by their own bodies. As all coordinated action demands such organization, we can assume that any complex animal must be able to internally represent, process, and transform information about the position and movement of its own body and movable parts. Primates, for example, represent information with respect to a number of body “coordinates,” including their eyes, head, and torso, each of which can move independently of the other. Such movements change the location of other body parts and the apparent position of everything external to the animal, in the absence of any movement of these external stimuli. In order to compensate for these apparent changes in location, animals must be able to represent their own movements in space so as to determine when such changes are the result of their own movements and when not. Second, animals act with respect to objects and events, including other animals, in the external world. Hence, they need to be able to represent such aspects of the world. This includes the need to represent the spatial attributes of objects/events as well as the location of these entities in the large-scale environment within which both they and the organism coexist. Finally, these objects and events transpire in certain places at certain times, and advanced animals likely require representational systems