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Machine learning detects altered spatial navigation features in outdoor behaviour of Alzheimer’s disease patients

Ghosh, Abhirup; Puthusseryppady, Vaisakh; Chan, Dennis; Mascolo, Cecilia; Hornberger, Michael; (2022) Machine learning detects altered spatial navigation features in outdoor behaviour of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Scientific Reports , 12 (1) , Article 3160. 10.1038/s41598-022-06899-w. Green open access

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Abstract

Impairment of navigation is one of the earliest symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but to date studies have involved proxy tests of navigation rather than studies of real life behaviour. Here we use GPS tracking to measure ecological outdoor behaviour in AD. The aim was to use data-driven machine learning approaches to explore spatial metrics within real life navigational traces that discriminate AD patients from controls. 15 AD patients and 18 controls underwent tracking of their outdoor navigation over two weeks. Three kinds of spatiotemporal features of segments were extracted, characterising the mobility domain (entropy, segment similarity, distance from home), spatial shape (total turning angle, segment complexity), and temporal characteristics (stop duration). Patients significantly differed from controls on entropy (p-value 0.008), segment similarity (p-value $${10}^{-7}$$<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>7</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math>), and distance from home (p-value $${10}^{-14}$$<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>14</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math>). Graph-based analyses yielded preliminary data indicating that topological features assessing the connectivity of visited locations may also differentiate patients from controls. In conclusion, our results show that specific outdoor navigation features discriminate AD patients from controls, which has significant implication for future AD diagnostics, outcome measures and interventions. Furthermore, this work illustrates how wearables-based sensing of everyday behaviour may be used to deliver ecologically-valid digital biomarkers of AD pathophysiology.

Type: Article
Title: Machine learning detects altered spatial navigation features in outdoor behaviour of Alzheimer’s disease patients
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-06899-w
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06899-w
Language: English
Additional information: Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10160708
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