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Navigating in a volumetric world: Metric encoding in the vertical axis of space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2013

Theresa Burt de Perera ,
Robert Holbrook ,
Victoria Davis ,
Alex Kacelnik  and
Tim Guilford
Theresa Burt de Perera
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom. [email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected]://oxnav.zoo.ox.ac.uk/
Robert Holbrook
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom. [email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected]://oxnav.zoo.ox.ac.uk/
Victoria Davis
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom. [email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected]://oxnav.zoo.ox.ac.uk/
Alex Kacelnik
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom. [email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected]://oxnav.zoo.ox.ac.uk/
Tim Guilford
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom. [email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected]://oxnav.zoo.ox.ac.uk/
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Abstract

Animals navigate through three-dimensional environments, but we argue that the way they encode three-dimensional spatial information is shaped by how they use the vertical component of space. We agree with Jeffery et al. that the representation of three-dimensional space in vertebrates is probably bicoded (with separation of the plane of locomotion and its orthogonal axis), but we believe that their suggestion that the vertical axis is stored “contextually” (that is, not containing distance or direction metrics usable for novel computations) is unlikely, and as yet unsupported. We describe potential experimental protocols that could clarify these differences in opinion empirically.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 36 , Issue 5 , October 2013 , pp. 546 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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