From SuperAging to preclinical Alzheimer’s disease: how spatial navigation can help uncover mechanisms of cognitive aging

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Deficits with spatial navigation are a hallmark of healthy aging, which can compromise mobility and independence. In addition, wandering behavior is the second most common behavioral deficit in advanced Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and path integration has been proposed as a sensitive indicator for detecting patients at increased risk of AD. In this talk, I will present a series of studies with human participants combining blood biomarker analysis, immersive virtual reality and functional / molecular neuroimaging. Using a biologically inspired computational model, I will show how errors in path integration are not only more pronounced in patients with preclinical AD, but that the sources of error change with disease progression. Moreover, I will discuss how compromised grid cell computations might contribute to deficits in both navigation and episodic memory.