Gettinglost.ca

We are very pleased to announce that we have recently completed our ‘Helping Children Stay Oriented’ project, which was aimed at producing a fun and engaging game to assess orientation skills in young children.


This (currently unnamed) game will allow us to assess children’s ability to form and make use of cognitive maps, which are critical skills to be able to successfully orient in real large scale surroundings, ...

Though orientation and navigation is undoubtedly complex, most people are able to reach their destination with little effort. This ability is produced by two primary behavioural mechanisms. ...

As many of you know, we are conducting the very first genetic study aiming at identifying the gene(s) responsible for DTD. This study is already underway using a traditional approach that involves looking at large families with a history of DTD. In these families, the presence of individuals with and without DTD helps to identify the genetic factors related to the lifelong topographical orientation difficulties as described in DTD.

Recently, however, ...

The aim of the feelSpace project to investigate the effects of long-term stimulation with orientation information on humans. In order to do this, we constructed a belt which enables its user to feel his orientation in space via vibrotactile stimulation.

This belt, developed at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, is equipped with a set of vibrators controlled by an electronic compass: the element pointing north ...

Giuseppe was recently interviewed for a large article in Glimpse Journal. More information is on their website, or you can download Giuseppe's interview as a .pdf here. In the interview, Giuseppe mentions our current projects as well as gives some background information on DTD. Worth a read if it is your first time on the site or a gettinglost.ca veteran! ...

When Alison Kendall’s boss told her in 2007 that her civil service job was being transferred to a different building in another part of Vancouver, she panicked. Commuting to a new office would be no big deal for most people, she knew. But Kendall might well have the worst sense of direction in the world. For as long as she can remember, she has been unable to perform even the simplest ...

Getting lost can be terrifying. But sometimes, it also leads you somewhere pleasantly unexpected. This week, we look at both sides of being lost.
Read on to find out what's on the show, or click the player below to listen (you can also download the podcast here, or from iTunes).

LINK TO ARTICLE FROM CBC RADIO
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Neil Burgess' talk on How your brain tells you where you are (9 min), and Daniel Wolpert talks about the real reason you have a brain (20 min).

EDIT - Iceblueaccent also pointed out another interesting Ted talk by Aris Venetikidis entitled Making Sense of Maps (17 min).


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Dr. Teskey is Professor of Neuroscience in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary (AB, Canada). You can view his lab's website here. ...

The developmental inability to recognize familiar faces, i.e. prosopagnosia (also known as face blindness) is a defect that has been estimated to affect about 2% of the population. In patients with brain damage, prosopagnosia is often accompanied by orientation problems. Thus, we would not be surprised to find out that these two cognitive difficulties may occur ...