# Volumetric and connectivity measures of navigation and memory skill acquisition

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA · 2020 · $434,125

## Abstract

Project Abstract
A cornerstone of cognitive neuroscience involves the idea that cognitive expertise can
be tracked through focal changes in gray matter. One proposed mechanism for how this
could work is that changes in synaptic plasticity result in dendritic growth, which in turn
result in volumetric increase in gray matter observable with MRI. Consistent with this,
one highly influential study suggested that taxi-drivers, who routinely employ cognitive
maps and their memory of environments to navigate, have an enlarged posterior
hippocampus compared to healthy control subjects and bus-drivers. A recent large-
sample study from co-PI Weisberg, however, found no correlation between hippocampal
volume and navigational performance in a city-like virtual reality task. Recent work has
also cast doubt on whether gray matter volume changes are an appropriate measure of
plasticity as they also likely involve changes in vascularization and other difficult to
isolate factors. Both task-related functional and resting state connectivity offer a novel
and powerful means of assaying brain wide changes potentially better related to
plasticity. Such measures could also arguably be better candidates for tracking changes
in skill acquisition. Here, we propose to resolve the issues above, and additionally
attempt to separate navigation vs. memory functions, by having one group of
participants undergo intensive training in orientation and another group undergo
intensive training in episodic memory (Aim 1). We will obtain pre- and post-training
measures of structural brain volume, task-related functional connectivity, and resting
state connectivity to determine whether and how novel cognitive skill acquisition affects
these neural measures. In addition, we will collect structural brain scans and behavioral
measures from published studies to attempt understand what brain regions correlate
with navigation and memory performance (Aim 2). This will allow us to perform a meta-
analysis of a large sample of studies to determine how regional brain volume correlates
with individual variability in these two important cognitive functions. The expected
outcomes of this proposal are a better understanding of how focal gray matter vs.
connectivity, as measured with MRI, relate to memory vs. navigation skills. Such
outcomes could influence cognitive or stimulation therapies for stroke patients by
providing insight into what brain regions or networks to target to mitigate cognitive
decline.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10115363
- **Project number:** 1R21NS120237-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
- **Principal Investigator:** ARNE D EKSTROM
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $434,125
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-01 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10115363

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10115363, Volumetric and connectivity measures of navigation and memory skill acquisition (1R21NS120237-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10115363. Licensed CC0.

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