Many people say they are "road nerd" with no sense of direction. However, poor sense of direction will not only lead to lose of way but also may lead to more serious consequences. According to a study in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, published poor sense of direction may be a precursor to Alzheimer's, but these symptoms may precede memory loss.
According to the French health journal TOPSANTE,researchers at University of Washington conducted an experiment virtual navigation to detect whether poor sense of direction is a precursor to Alzheimer's disease. Principle of this experiment is: to identify people in everyday life mainly depends on two different directions of spatial expression and navigation. Volunteers need to conduct two navigation capability tests: the ability of route learning and memory and cognitive ability on the surrounding environment.
In participants in this experiment, 42 of them were clinically normal and without signs of Alzheimer's disease; 13 of them were clinically normal but with the signs of Alzheimer's disease; 16 had early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.
The results show that there are signs of Alzheimer's participants can not draw a cognitive map of the environment, however, these people can remember the routes. The navigational tasks for assessing cognitive mapping capability will be able to be an effective way to detect Alzheimer's first change.
University of Washington Psychiatry Dr. Samantha • Allison said that early Alzheimer's disease showed atrophy and difficulty drawing hippocampus. In the development stage of the disease, cognitive mapping capability would be weakened and change of the caudate nucleus occured and the lack of ability to learn would also manifested.
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