{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,18]],"date-time":"2026-08-18T04:33:20Z","timestamp":1787027600784,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,16]],"date-time":"2026-08-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1786838400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China","award":["23YJAZH087"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["23YJAZH087"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100017596","name":"Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi Province","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["2025JC-YBMS-726"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2025JC-YBMS-726"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100017596","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"name":"Postgraduate Education Comprehensive Reform Research and Practice Project of Shaanxi Normal University","award":["GERP-25-02"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GERP-25-02"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["J. Intell."],"abstract":"<jats:p>Background: Developmental topographical disorientation (DTD)-like navigational difficulties can impair everyday orientation and spatial information processing. Objective: We examined whether 8-week virtual reality (VR) orienteering training improves performance on a laboratory spatial memory task in college students with operationally defined DTD-like navigational difficulties and examined task-related cortical changes. Methods: In a randomized controlled trial, 96 students were assigned to VR orienteering, VR exercise, or control groups (n = 32\/group). The exercise groups trained twice weekly for 45 min for 8 weeks at moderate intensity (64\u201376% HRmax). Before and after the intervention, all participants completed a delayed visuospatial recognition task designed to assess spatial-memory-related processing, while functional near-infrared spectroscopy measured hemodynamic changes in prefrontal and sensorimotor cortices. The post-test session was conducted 48 h after the final scheduled session, with no immediate post-exercise assessment. Results: VR orienteering produced greater improvement in spatial-memory-task accuracy and reaction time than the other groups. After BH-FDR correction across eight ROIs, training-specific reductions in task-related activation were observed in the right primary motor cortex and left frontopolar area. Within the VR orienteering group, pre-to-post change in left orbitofrontal activation was negatively associated with change in spatial-memory-task accuracy, Pearson r(30) = \u22120.819, 95% CI [\u22120.908, \u22120.658], p &lt; 0.001, R2 = 0.670; the association remained significant after eight-ROI BH-FDR correction (adjusted p &lt; 0.001). Conclusions: VR orienteering improved performance on the laboratory spatial memory task and was accompanied by reduced task-related cortical recruitment. Greater reductions in L-OFC activation were linked to greater improvements in accuracy, identifying L-OFC activation change as a neural correlate of training-related spatial-memory improvement.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/jintelligence14080187","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,17]],"date-time":"2026-08-17T08:05:41Z","timestamp":1786953941000},"page":"187","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Virtual Reality-Based Orienteering Training Improves Spatial Memory in College Students with Operationally Defined DTD-like Navigational Difficulties: fNIRS Correlates of Training-Related Cortical Adaptation"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8150-2114","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yang","family":"Liu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Key Laboratory of Sports Learning Science, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi\u2019an 710119, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-5620-6888","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Heying","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Key Laboratory of Sports Learning Science, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi\u2019an 710119, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Pengyang","family":"Kang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Key Laboratory of Sports Learning Science, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi\u2019an 710119, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bao, S., Liu, J., and Liu, Y. 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