People in the initial stages of Alzheimer’s have difficulty turning while walking — a symptom that could be used for early diagnosis of the disease.
This is the conclusion of a team of researchers who studied how different groups of people performed navigational task while wearing virtual reality goggles.
It is estimated that there are some 944,000 people living with dementia in the UK — 60 percent of whom have Alzheimer’s disease specifically.
Early diagnosis is key in ensuring the best management and treatment of the disease.
However, while many recent advances have been in blood tests for the characteristic proteins associated with the disease, cognitive tests are still needed to supplement these.
The study was undertaken by cognitive neuroscientist Dr Andrea Castegnaro and her colleagues at University College London.
The researchers recruited 31 healthy young people, 36 healthy elderly people, and 43 patients with mild cognitive impairment.
Each subject was asked to walk along a route in virtual reality, comprising four straight legs and three turns, marked out by virtual cones. They then had to follow the same path back to their starting point without the visual aides.
The task was repeated under three different conditions — an unchanged virtual environment, a virtual environment in which the ground was replaced by a plain texture, and one where all the landmarks had been removed.
The team found that people with early Alzheimer’s disease both consistently over-estimated the turns on the return route, and showed increased variability in their sense of direction.
However, these specific impairments were not seen in the healthy older participants, or those subjects with mild cognitive impairment who did not show underlying signs of Alzheimer’s — suggesting that they are specific to the disease.
Castegnaro said: “Our findings offer a new avenue for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease by focussing on specific navigational errors.
“However, we now know that more work is needed to confirm these early findings.”
Castegnaro added: “We aim to develop practical tests that can be easily integrated into clinical settings, considering common constraints such as limited space and time.
“Traditional navigation tests often have requirements that are challenging to meet in a clinical environment.
“Our research focuses on specific aspects of navigation that are more adaptable to these constraints.
“We are designing these tests to be both quick and comprehensive, aiming to collect sufficient data for a reliable diagnosis in a time-efficient manner, thereby increasing the likelihood of their widespread adoption.”
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Current Biology.
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