Mental-orientation: A new approach to assessing patients across the Alzheimer’s disease spectrum.

Abstract

Mental-orientation is suggested to play a key role in Alzheimer's disease, and consequently in early detection and follow-up of patients along the Alzheimer's disease spectrum. (PsycINFO Database Record

Self-Agency and Self-Ownership in Cognitive Mapping

“…The suggested agency-ownership model may help in the classification of several memoryrelated neuropsychiatric disorders [88] in the domain of space, time and person. Most prominently, and as based on recent findings [89][90][91][92], we claim that Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a disorder in which the orientation of the narrative-self to the world is disturbed, encompassing agency and ownership processes. AD is clinically ill-defined, and mere memory or cognitive complaints and tests are insufficient for diagnosis and monitoring of disease progression [90,93].…”

“…It was further hypothesized that the egocentric-allocentric transformation, crucial for the creation of cognitive maps, and thus spatial and episodic memories, plays a major role in the disease [90,94,95]. Ecologically-valid, self-related approaches to test orientation and navigation helped to identify early disruption in young adults at genetic risk for AD and at an early stage on the Alzheimer's continuum [89,91]. Neuroimaging studies showed that brain regions affected by AD highly overlap with the core network, default mode network and orientation system [89,90,96].…”

“…Ecologically-valid, self-related approaches to test orientation and navigation helped to identify early disruption in young adults at genetic risk for AD and at an early stage on the Alzheimer's continuum [89,91]. Neuroimaging studies showed that brain regions affected by AD highly overlap with the core network, default mode network and orientation system [89,90,96]. Based on this evidence, it is suggested that agency and ownership in cognitive mapping, and specifically the translations between egocentric to allocentric reference-frames and back, are impaired in very early stages of AD, and might therefore be of particular importance for detecting very early signs of the disease.…”

Processing of different spatial scales in the human brain

“…Patients with lateral parietal cortex lesions are impaired in navigating their immediate, small-scale environment (‘egocentric disorientation’; Aguirre and D'Esposito, 1999; Stark, 1996; Wilson et al, 2005). In contrast, patients with retrosplenial lesions (Aguirre and D'Esposito, 1999; Takahashi et al, 1997) and Alzheimer’s disease (Monacelli et al, 2003; Peters-Founshtein et al, 2018) show the opposite pattern – correct localization in the immediately visible environment but inability to navigate in the larger unseen environment. Despite this evidence, few neuroscientific studies directly contrasted between representation of different scales of space.…”

Impact of secondhand smoke exposure on cognitive function among middle-aged and older women in China: findings from three waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

“…12 Orientation was one's ability to identify the exact date, month, day and season of the year. 22 Our results suggested that for each 1 year increase in age, there was an additional 0.01-point, 0.02-point, 0.04-point and 0.06-point decline in visuospatial, orientation, memory and overall cognition scores, respectively. SHS seems to be more strongly associated with cognitive decline than ageing, since the magnitude of significant coefficient between SHS and cognitive decline was almost four times the one in ageing.…”