How have virtual-reality studies shown that the human hippocampus is involved in navigation?

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Patient H.M. and short-term memory loss explained — hippocampus Learn about Henry Molaison (better known as “patient H.M.”), whose short-term memory loss following a lobotomy helped researchers to understand how brain structures are related to brain function.

Virtual reality (VR) has been instrumental in bridging the gap between rodent research and human spatial cognition. By creating realistic virtual environments, researchers can adapt tasks originally designed for animals to study human navigation in a controlled setting.1

Studies utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with these virtual worlds have demonstrated that the hippocampus is actively involved when humans navigate large-scale environments and learn the locations of objects within a virtual arena.1

Furthermore, research involving epilepsy patients—who undergo intracranial electrode monitoring—has provided more direct evidence. By recording single-cell activity while patients perform spatial-memory tasks in virtual environments, scientists have identified place-responsive cells in the human hippocampal formation. These cells exhibit firing properties similar to the place cells and grid cells observed in rodents, confirming that the hippocampus plays a fundamental role in creating spatial representations that guide human navigation.1