TY  - JOUR
VL  - 12
N1  - © 2023 Springer Nature Limited. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
JF  - Scientific Reports
PB  - NATURE PORTFOLIO
A1  - Puthusseryppady, Vaisakh
A1  - Morrissey, Sol
A1  - Spiers, Hugo
A1  - Patel, Martyn
A1  - Hornberger, Michael
KW  - Alzheimer's disease
KW  -  Cognitive ageing
KW  -  Cognitive neuroscience
KW  -  Diseases of the nervous system
KW  -  Human behaviour
AV  - public
Y1  - 2022///
TI  - Predicting real world spatial disorientation in Alzheimer's disease patients using virtual reality navigation tests
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-17634-w
ID  - discovery10169288
EP  - 12
N2  - Spatial navigation impairments in Alzheimer's disease (AD) have been suggested to underlie patients experiencing spatial disorientation. Though many studies have highlighted navigation impairments for AD patients in virtual reality (VR) environments, the extent to which these impairments predict a patient's risk for spatial disorientation in the real world is still poorly understood. The aims of this study were to (a) investigate the spatial navigation abilities of AD patients in VR environments as well as in a real world community setting and (b) explore whether we could predict patients at a high risk for spatial disorientation in the community based on their VR navigation. Sixteen community-dwelling AD patients and 21 age/gender matched controls were assessed on their egocentric and allocentric navigation abilities in VR environments using the Virtual Supermarket Test (VST) and Sea Hero Quest (SHQ) as well as in the community using the Detour Navigation Test (DNT). When compared to controls, AD patients exhibited impairments on the VST, SHQ, and DNT. For patients, only SHQ wayfinding distance and wayfinding duration significantly predicted composite disorientation score on the DNT (??=?0.422, p?=?0.034, R2?=?0.299 and ??=?0.357, p?=?0.046, R2?=?0.27 respectively). However, these same VR measures could not reliably predict which patients were at highest risk of spatial disorientation in the community (p?>?0.1). Future studies should focus on developing VR-based tests which can predict AD patients at high risk of getting spatially disorientated in the real world.
IS  - 1
ER  -