October 11, 2023

expert reaction to study looking at whether navigational mistakes could be early signs of Alzheimer’s disease

A study published in Current Biology looks at navigational mistakes as a possible sign of Alzheimer’s disease. 

Dr Leah Mursaleen, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said:

“There are nearly 1 million people living with Alzheimer’s in the UK, but thanks to limitations in current methods of detection, only around 60% of them will ever receive a diagnosis. So, it’s vital that we develop new, more precise early detection techniques that can be easily used in healthcare systems like the NHS. This will be particularly important as we enter an era where dementia becomes a treatable condition.

“Thanks to advances in technology, a wide range of devices and platforms are being explored to see if they have the potential to detect early signs of neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s. This small, early-stage study looks at using a virtual reality environment to analyse the way people turn while walking. The results suggest this can detect differences in participants with early Alzheimer’s disease. However, as the group included fewer than 50 people, a larger study is needed to understand the future potential of this promising discovery.

“It will also be important to understand how digital technologies like this can be used in combination with other emerging techniques like blood tests, which are also showing huge promise for detecting Alzheimer’s disease.”

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, President of the British Neuroscience Association and Professor in the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh, said:

“ Castegnaro and colleagues used virtual reality to study path integration, an aspect of how we navigate, in 31 young adults,  36 healthy older adults, and 43 older adults with mild cognitive symptoms (11 of whom also had evidence of Alzheimer’s pathology in their spinal fluid).  Young adults performed best on the virtual reality task requiring them to complete a triangle path without seeing the target end position. Older people with cognitive impairment had more trouble with the navigation and those with indications of Alzheimer’s pathology performed worst. The people with cognitive impairment and particularly those with Alzheimer’s pathology had trouble determining the angle of the turn in the task. While this is an interesting study that helps scientists understand early changes in brain function in Alzheimer’s disease, it does have limitations including the relatively small number of participants.”

‘Overestimation in angular path integration precedes Alzheimer’s dementia’ by Andrea Castegnaro et al. was published in Current Biology at 16:00 UK time on 11^th October 2023.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.047

Declared interests

Prof Tara Spires-Jones: I have no conflicts with this study.

For all other experts, no reply to our request for DOIs was received.