# Role of Prefrontal Cortex in Real World Navigation in Young and Old Primates

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA · 2021 · $243,750

## Abstract

Project Summary
This project focuses on the development of noninvasive therapeutic interventions in humans to improve
spatial cognition due to declines seen during healthy and pathological aging. Both normal and
pathophysiological processes that occur in aging result in difficulties navigating. These challenges can
be profoundly debilitating. A central capacity in navigation is the ability to plan routes to goals. While
the brain circuits for navigation are increasingly well-characterized, the nature of neural representations
of goals for goal-directed navigation remain less so. We aim to describe neural representations for goal
locations for navigation. In order to fully describe these representations and how they change in aging,
both young and old nonhuman primates will run mazes in virtual reality while wireless neural recordings
are performed in the prefrontal cortex. An important tool to explore computations for goal-directed
navigation in humans is the use of virtual reality. But there are important differences between virtual
reality and real life navigation, and the generalization of findings in virtual reality to the real world must
be explored. To aid in understanding how such findings can be extended to the real world, we aim to
directly compare neural activity in both contexts by building real world mazes that match virtual ones.
Monkeys will learn to navigate a maze for rewards in virtual reality and then assessed in real world
analogues. This novel experimental design will allow the direct comparison of neuronal activity and
learning in virtual mazes to activity and behavior in real world mazes. Finally, in order to spur the
development of therapies to address the scourge of age-related declines in spatial cognition, we will
utilize noninvasive repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, already approved to treat major
depression disorder, to stimulate activity in the prefrontal cortex in both young and old monkeys. We
will examine how this intervention changes the neural activity and the behavior as monkeys run mazes.
We anticipate that we will be able to rescue observed deficits in navigation in older monkeys using such
intervention and hence potentially advance a new path of treatment for declines in spatial cognition in
the elderly.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10288027
- **Project number:** 1R21AG073958-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
- **Principal Investigator:** MICHAEL L PLATT
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $243,750
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-30 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10288027

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10288027, Role of Prefrontal Cortex in Real World Navigation in Young and Old Primates (1R21AG073958-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10288027. Licensed CC0.

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