A decline in navigational skills could predict neurodegenerative disease
"In humans, navigation is much more cumbersome to research than learning or memory," says Thomas Wolbers, a neuroscientist specializing in aging and cognition at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases . "But it has such a dramatic impact on everyday life, and the key structures of the 'navigational network' in the brain are very sensitive to both ordinary healthy aging and pathological factors." Currently, Alzheimer's disease is diagnosed based on an individual's medical history, genetic risk factors, and performance on tests that measure memory, language, and reasoning impairments. Wolbers and his colleagues from the United States and the United Kingdom suggest that navigational impairments are among the earliest signs of the Alzheimer's progression. Healthy older individuals, for instance, strongly prefer to map objects and landmarks relative to their body position (an egocentric strategy) rather than in relation to external obje...