Imagine looking at a football field and seeing every player’s position. A moment later, the other players disappear. Only your player and the ball remain visible. To reach the ball, you must remember where the opponents were and plan a route that avoids them.
This is the central challenge in Brain Lane. Although the task appears simple, it combines several cognitive processes: visuospatial working memory, goal-directed planning, and the use of an internal representation of space.
Working memory allows us to hold information temporarily while using it to complete a task. Its visuospatial component helps us remember where objects are located and how they relate to one another.
In Brain Lane, the positions of the other players are visible only briefly. Once they disappear, the player can no longer rely on direct visual information. The route must instead be planned using a temporary mental representation of the field.
This internal representation does not need to preserve every visual detail. What matters is the spatial structure: where the obstacles were, which areas remain open, and whether the planned path crosses a dangerous position.
In a classic neuroimaging study, Tom Hartley and his colleagues asked participants to move through virtual towns. In one condition, participants independently found their way to a destination. In another, they followed a familiar route, while a control condition provided a visible trail.
The results indicated that independently finding a route and simply following one involved partly different neural systems. Flexible wayfinding placed greater demands on brain regions associated with spatial memory and navigation, including the hippocampus.
This distinction is important for Brain Lane. The game does not display a complete route for the player to follow. Instead, the player must construct a route based on remembered spatial information.
A more recent study by Jordan Crivelli-Decker and colleagues examined how the human hippocampus represents goals during planning and navigation.
Participants learned two virtual “zoo” environments containing the same animals but different connections between locations. During each trial, they were shown a starting point and a goal. They first had to plan a route and then navigate through a sequence of decisions to reach the correct destination.
The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activity. During planning, activity patterns in the hippocampus contained information about the particular context, route, and goal. During navigation, the researchers also observed prospective activity related to an upcoming key decision point.
The results suggest that the hippocampus does not simply store a fixed map. Its representations are influenced by the current context and the goal a person is trying to reach.
Brain Lane is not a direct reproduction of either scientific experiment. However, its structure contains several related elements:
The hidden players create an additional working-memory demand. The user must maintain their positions while considering possible routes to the ball. A direct path may be shorter, but it may also pass through a location occupied by an opponent. Success therefore depends not only on remembering the field but also on using that memory to guide a future action.
Spatial memory is often described as the ability to remember where something is located. In real behaviour, however, remembering a location is rarely the final objective. Spatial information is normally used to decide what to do next: where to turn, which route to take, or which area to avoid.
Brain Lane is built around this transition from memory to action. The player observes the field, forms a temporary internal representation, and then uses it to construct a path toward a goal.
This does not mean that playing Brain Lane has already been scientifically demonstrated to improve memory or navigation abilities. Establishing such an effect would require a controlled study involving the game itself. What can be said is that the task draws on cognitive processes closely related to those studied in research on visuospatial memory, cognitive maps, and goal-directed navigation.
Crivelli-Decker, J., Clarke, A., Park, S. A., et al. (2023). Goal-oriented representations in the human hippocampus during planning and navigation. Nature Communications, 14, 2946.
Hartley, T., Maguire, E. A., Spiers, H. J., & Burgess, N. (2003). The well-worn route and the path less traveled: Distinct neural bases of route following and wayfinding in humans. Neuron, 37(5), 877–888.
Brown, T. I., Carr, V. A., LaRocque, K. F., et al. (2016). Prospective representation of navigational goals in the human hippocampus. Science, 352(6291), 1323–1326.