POSTPONED

Euclidean or not: Human navigation in curved and wormhole spaces

Speaker: Ranxiao Frances Wang
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA

May 21, 2025
11:15 AM - 1:00 PM U.S. Eastern Time 

Abstract 
Navigation and representations of the spatial environment are central to human survival.  Given the near Euclidean nature of the physical space we evolved in, it's reasonable to expect that our spatial navigation system also follows Euclidean principles. However, a number of studies have challenged the Euclidean hypothesis. In this talk I will discuss the central issues and present a series of new studies that examined the metric properties of human spatial representations by creating curved virtual spaces (Hyperbolic and Spherical spaces) where lights travel along curves and one may see the back of one's own head, and spaces with wormholes where one can be instantaneously transported to a different location in space and an infinite number of possible Euclidean representations may be constructed based on one's perceptual experience. 

The data showed that the human path integration / spatial updating system operates on Euclidean geometry, even when curvature violations are clearly present. Moreover, people not only can construct global Euclidean representations of non-Euclidean wormhole space, but also construct them in different ways by selectively preserving distance, turning angle, and/or straightness of the path segments while sacrificing the others. These findings suggest that human spatial representations are fundamentally Euclidean but likely fragmented without consistent global integration.

Return to the full 2024-2025 program.