Abstract
•Neural correlates of reorientation were studied in a virtual reality plus-maze.•Participants were randomly teleported to one of two starting alleys.•EEG correlates of reorientation were observed 100 ms after teleportation.•This suggests that participants built up expectations for a default starting alley.
Quick reorientation is an essential part of successful navigation. Despite growing attention to this ability, little is known about how reorientation happens in humans. To this aim, we recorded EEG from 34 participants. Participants were navigating a simple virtual reality plus-maze where at the beginning of each trial they were randomly teleported to either the North or the South alley. Results show that the teleportation event caused a quick reorientation effect over occipito-parietal areas as early as 100 ms; meaning that despite the known stochastic nature of the teleportation, participants built up expectations for their place of arrival. This result has important consequences for the optimal design of virtual reality locomotion.