Cortical Correlates of Spatial Navigation Skills in an Immersive Virtual Reality Environment

November 18, 2025 updated by: IRCCS Eugenio Medea

Study of the Cortical Correlates of Spatial Navigation Skills in an Immersive Virtual Reality Environment

The goal of this study is to investigate the neural mechanisms that undergoes spatial navigation skills in children/adolescents aged between 8 and 17 years. These skills play an important role in daily life, as they allow us to orient ourselves in familiar and unfamiliar environments, locate objects, interact with them and memorize their position. Navigation abilities vary widely between individuals, change with age and might be affected by diseases, such as the cerebral palsy (CP). Previous studies have, in fact, demonstrated differences in the learning and adaptation methods of spatial navigation skills in children affected by CP compared to typically developing (TD) peers. Through the use of the electroencephalogram (EEG) we want to shed light on the mechanisms that govern this ability with the aim of:

  1. better characterize spatial navigation skills in children/adolescents, both TD and affected by CP;
  2. investigate the origin of the differences found between the spatial navigation skills of TD children and those affected by CP, improving knowledge of the pathology and thus allowing, in the future, to identify more adequate rehabilitation interventions.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

70

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Locations

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • typically developing subjects aged between 8 and 17 years;
  • subjects with CP aged between 8 and 17 years;

Exclusion Criteria:

  • subjects aged under 8 or over 17 years;
  • subjects with epileptic problems;
  • subjects with poor head control;
  • subjects with visual problems that can not be corrected with prescription lens;

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Basic Science
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Navigation task
Administration of the navigation task in an immersive virtual reality environment with recording of the EEG signal
Other: Preliminary assessment
Evaluation of the cognitive level through the Raven test and of spatial navigation skills through the Corsi test and the maze sub-test of the WISC-III.
Other: Navigation task with EEG recording
Administration of the navigation task in an immersive virtual reality environment and EEG signal recording. The participant will wear virtual reality viewers and EEG cap. The task consists in moving and orienting themselves inside a five-way maze in order to reach a treasure. The participant will be asked to carry out 30 trials lasting a maximum of 120s each.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Power Spectral Density (PSD)
Time Frame: Once
Differences in power values between TD and CP subjects
Once
Navigation performance
Time Frame: Once
Navigation performance based on the following parameters: number of routes visited in each trial; total length of the path for each trial; error between distance traveled and ideal distance for each trial (identified as the minimum distance to reach the treasure from the starting point); angle of rotation of the viewer in each trial; duration of each trial.
Once

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

IRCCS Eugenio Medea

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

November 14, 2024

Primary Completion (Estimated)

September 30, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

December 31, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

November 25, 2024

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 26, 2024

First Posted (Actual)

November 29, 2024

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

November 19, 2025

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 18, 2025

Last Verified

November 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 1111 (Other Grant/Funding Number: Prima Psychiatry internal research fund)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Subscribe