Summary: New research finds that the brain circuitry responsible for map-based navigation is active in children as young as five. Using a child-friendly virtual environment called Tiny Town, researchers demonstrated that young children can form and hold mental maps to guide navigation, and functional brain scans show the retrosplenial complex is already engaged during these tasks.
This evidence challenges the long-standing view that map-based navigation only matures around age 12. Instead, the study from Emory University indicates that the neural substrate for representing locations within a broader layout—the retrosplenial complex (RSC)—is operational far earlier, offering fresh insight into the early development of complex spatial reasoning.
Key Facts:
- Early navigation ability: Five-year-old children used brain systems associated with map-based navigation to learn and recall locations.
- RSC activation: The retrosplenial complex showed location-specific responses while children performed map-related tasks.
- Tiny Town test: A simplified virtual environment allowed young participants to learn building locations and demonstrate mental mapping.
Source: Emory University
Many behavioral studies have suggested that using landmarks to form map-like representations of large spaces develops relatively late in childhood. A new neuroscience study led by researchers at Emory University used fMRI and a specially designed virtual environment to test whether the brain regions that support map-based navigation are present earlier than previously thought.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study provides the first neural evidence that five-year-olds represent navigationally relevant location information within the RSC. “While large-scale navigation abilities certainly continue to develop throughout childhood, our findings show that the underlying neural system is established remarkably early,” said Yaelan Jung, the paper’s first author and a postdoctoral fellow in Emory’s Department of Psychology.
Daniel Dilks, associate professor of psychology and the study’s senior author, emphasized the unexpected timeline: “Rather than taking a decade or more, map-based navigation is underway in half that time. Five-year-olds have the brain system enabling them to find their way around a tiny, virtual town.” The children in the study not only recognized that similar buildings could appear in different parts of the town, they also demonstrated knowledge of how to move between those places.
Mapping the visual brain
Dilks’ lab investigates how different regions of the visual cortex support recognition of faces, places and objects, and how these functions emerge from infancy through adulthood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which detects changes in blood flow associated with neural activity, the researchers can observe which brain regions respond during specific tasks.
Prior adult work from the lab identified three scene-selective regions with distinct roles: the parahippocampal place area (PPA) for scene categorization, the occipital place area (OPA) for perceiving and navigating immediate surroundings, and the retrosplenial complex (RSC) for mapping places within a larger spatial framework to support navigation between locations.
Dilks notes that understanding normal brain development is a critical step toward diagnosing and eventually treating neurological disorders: “By continuing to learn more about how the brain develops and functions normally, we keep moving closer to being able to repair it when something goes wrong.”
Walking navigation versus map-based navigation
In related work, Dilks and Jung found that the brain network supporting walking through immediate surroundings and avoiding obstacles does not reach adult-like organization until around age eight, despite young children being able to walk much earlier. That unexpected dissociation led the team to hypothesize that map-based navigation might develop earlier, since infants and toddlers are often carried or moved through environments and can accumulate spatial experience before they walk independently.
To test this, the researchers adapted an adult virtual town called Neuralville into a simplified triangular layout—Tiny Town—designed for five-year-olds. Distinct landmarks at the triangle’s corners (mountain, tree, lake) and a small set of child-familiar buildings (ice cream stores, playgrounds, fire stations) made the environment accessible while preserving core elements needed to probe map-based representations.
Making science child-friendly
Working with young children required playful, patient methods. Jung described a staged process: children first learned to navigate Tiny Town using arrow keys, then completed recognition tasks with still images (for example, whether a building belonged in a particular corner). Participants who demonstrated understanding progressed to training for the scanner.
Scanner training was presented as a game that required holding still—children practiced “freezing” in the lab and rehearsed a simple button-press task that paired images of buildings with location cues. The practice took place in a mock scanner; for the real scan, children were made comfortable with a blanket and pillow and told they would watch a private movie during the session.
fMRI data showed that five-year-olds represent the locations of specific buildings in Tiny Town within their RSC, and that this location coding correlates with behavioral performance on location tasks. In contrast, the PPA encoded category-level information (for example, “ice cream store”) rather than specific locations—mirroring the functional split previously observed in adults.
Jung reflected on the experience: “It was really fun to work with the children. I learned that the age of five is a magical time to scan a child. They don’t tend to be afraid of new things.” The Dilks lab is now developing protocols to study even younger children, including toddlers, using creative strategies such as mock scanners, cartoons and snacks to support cooperation during imaging.
About this navigation and neurodevelopment research news
Author: Carol Clark
Source: Emory University
Contact: Carol Clark – Emory University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access. “Early development of navigationally relevant location information in the retrosplenial complex” by Yaelan Jung et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Abstract
Early development of navigationally relevant location information in the retrosplenial complex
Representing the locations of places so that they can serve as landmarks is essential for navigating large-scale environments, a process called map-based navigation. While adult neuroimaging studies implicate the retrosplenial complex (RSC) in this function, its developmental timeline has been unclear. Using fMRI multivoxel pattern analysis and a virtual town paradigm, the authors investigated whether 5-year-olds’ RSC represents location-specific information.
The study found that the RSC in five-year-olds encodes the locations of particular buildings within the virtual town (for example, distinguishing an ice cream store by the mountain from the same store by the lake), rather than simply coding building category. This location-sensitive neural pattern correlated with children’s performance on location tasks. Multidimensional scaling showed that RSC neural representations reflected the actual spatial layout of the town. Conversely, the parahippocampal place area represented category information, not specific location, consistent with its role in scene categorization.
Together, these results demonstrate that navigationally relevant location representations in RSC are present by age five, revealing earlier origins for map-based navigation than previously recognized.