Most research groups studying human navigational behavior with virtual environment (VE) technology develop their own tasks and protocols. This makes it difficult to compare results between groups and to create normative data sets for any specific navigational task. Such norms, however, are prerequisites for the use of navigation assessments as diagnostic tools-for example, to support the early and differential diagnosis of atypical aging. Here we start addressing these problems by presenting and evaluating a new navigation test suite that we make freely available to other researchers (https://osf.io/mx52y/). Specifically, we designed three navigational tasks, which are adaptations of earlier published tasks used to study the effects of typical and atypical aging on navigation: a route-repetition task that can be solved using egocentric navigation strategies, and route-retracing and directional-approach tasks that both require allocentric spatial processing. Despite introducing a number of changes to the original tasks to make them look more realistic and ecologically valid, and therefore easy to explain to people unfamiliar with a VE or who have cognitive impairments, we replicated the findings from the original studies. Specifically, we found general agerelated declines in navigation performance and additional specific difficulties in tasks that required allocentric processes. These findings demonstrate that our new tasks have task demands similar to those of the original tasks, and are thus suited to be used more widely. Keywords Navigation. Route learning. Navigation test. Cognitive aging Spatial navigation is a fundamental cognitive ability that is important for mobility and independence. However, a growing number of experimental studies have demonstrated agerelated declines in a variety of orientation and navigational tasks, including route learning and repetition (
Introduction: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a clinical dementia syndrome associated with frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) or Alzheimer's disease (AD).Impairment in activities of daily living is essential for dementia diagnosis, yet less is known about the neuropathologic impact on functional decline in PPA, especially over time.Methods: Activities of Daily Living Questionnaire (ADLQ) ratings were compared by suspected underlying pathology between 17 PPA Aβ+ and 11 PPA Aβparticipants at 6month intervals for 2 years using a linear mixed-effects model. A general linear model examined associations between functional decline and cortical thickness at baseline.
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