Cortical dynamics are differentially associated with decision-making strategies in human wayfinding: An EEG study

Navigating urban environments involves making directional decisions at intersections, which can be guided by different cognitive strategies. This study investigated whether distinct strategies correspond to specific spatiotemporal brain activity patterns, reflecting differences in cognitive processes using source-localized scalp electroencephalography (EEG). Thirty-two participants navigated five strategy-specific virtual mazes and made directional decisions at intersections in each given maze. At the behavioral level, we found that strategies involving higher cognitive memory load were associated with lower accuracy, while those requiring complex visual processing resulted in longer reaction times. At the EEG level, we observed that increased theta activity was sensitive to differences in cognitive demands across strategies and was particularly associated with cue-piloting, memory retrieval, and spatial information updating and integration. Increased alpha activity was linked to visual cue and scene processing, while both increased and decreased beta activity reflected internally referenced memory and predictive processing, respectively. We further found that strategies relying on wisely visible cues showed similar spatiotemporal theta activation patterns, whereas those involving absent or nearby visual cues exhibited distinct patterns. Lastly, we observed that increased theta, alpha, and beta activity were associated with higher cognitive demand both before and after decision making. However, during decision making, increased theta activity was linked to efficient navigation in frontal-limbic-parietal-temporal regions and to greater cognitive demand in occipital regions. These findings indicate that cortical dynamics differ according to the cognitive strategy, depending on the type of visual cues and spatial judgments, thereby supporting a classification framework grounded in cognitive processing demands.