Schedule of Events | Symposia

Moments of uncertainty during navigation provoke increases in autonomic arousal and changes in MTL activity in the real world

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Amanda Holt¹ (u1309621@utah.edu), Kiersten Olson¹, Luis Garcia², Uros Topalovic³, Mauricio Vallejo Martelo³, Matthias Stangl³, Tyler Davis¹, Martina Hollearn¹, Justin Campbell¹, Lensky Augustin¹, Wyatt Wilson¹, Dawn Eliashiv¹, Nick Hasulak⁴, Sonja Hiller³, Itzhak Fried³, Nanthia Suthana³, Cory Inman¹; ¹University of Utah, ²USC Information Sciences Institute, ³University of California, Los Angeles, ⁴David Geffen School of Medicine, ⁵Phoenix Research Consulting

The goal of cognitive neuroscience is to understand and explain real-world behavior in terms of brain activity, and to use these insights to develop treatments for neural disorders. By using wearable EDA sensors synchronized with intracranial EEG recordings in epilepsy patients with permanently implanted RNS devices, we can explore the electrophysiological basis of real-world navigation and memory encoding in a way that captures the complexity of real-world experiences. We hypothesized we’d observe changes in medial temporal lobe (MTL) activity based on changes in spatial context, behavior, and movement speed. In this study, five participants navigated around campus while MTL electrophysiology and the participant’s autonomic physiology (electrodermal activity, electrocardiography, respiration) were recorded. Subjects walked the route 7-8 times with the 1st walk guided (encoding) and 6-7 of the walks navigated by the participants (navigation retrieval). Changes in environmental context (doorways, indoors, outdoors, etc.) and behavior (getting lost, making a turn, abnormal social interactions, etc.) were annotated by expert observers. Overall, we found that electrodermal activity increased around moments of uncertainty, like getting lost, which was highly correlated with changes in MTL activity. Taken together, we find evidence that moments of uncertainty provoke changes in autonomic arousal and neural activity.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic