{"id":213332,"date":"2025-05-06T05:14:43","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T10:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/children-as-young-as-5-can-navigate-a-tiny-town-new-insights-into-how-the-brain-develops-navigational-skills"},"modified":"2025-05-06T05:14:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T10:14:43","slug":"children-as-young-as-5-can-navigate-a-tiny-town-new-insights-into-how-the-brain-develops-navigational-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/children-as-young-as-5-can-navigate-a-tiny-town-new-insights-into-how-the-brain-develops-navigational-skills","title":{"rendered":"Children as young as 5 can navigate a \u2018tiny town\u2019: New insights into how the brain develops navigational skills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/children-as-young-as-5-can-navigate-a-tiny-town-new-insights-into-how-the-brain-develops-navigational-skills.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many behavioral studies suggest that using landmarks to navigate through large-scale spaces\u2014known as map-based navigation\u2014is not established until around age 12.<\/p>\n<p>A neuroscience study at Emory University counters that assumption. Through experiments combining <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/brain+scans\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">brain scans<\/a> and a <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/virtual+environment\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">virtual environment<\/a> the researchers dubbed Tiny Town, they showed that five-year-olds have a brain system that supports map-based navigation.<\/p>\n<p>The journal <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i> has <a href=\"https:\/\/pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2503569122\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> the finding, the first neural evidence that this cognitive ability is in place in such young children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many behavioral studies suggest that using landmarks to navigate through large-scale spaces\u2014known as map-based navigation\u2014is not established until around age 12. A neuroscience study at Emory University counters that assumption. Through experiments combining brain scans and a virtual environment the researchers dubbed Tiny Town, they showed that five-year-olds have a brain system that supports map-based [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,1879],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience","category-virtual-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}