Aging and Spatial Navigation: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go?

Abstract

Spatial navigation is a complex cognitive skill that is necessary for everyday functioning in the environment. However, navigational skills are not typically measured in most test batteries assessing cognitive aging. The present paper reviews what we know about behavioral differences between older and younger adults in navigational skill and reviews the putative neural mechanisms that may underlie these behavioral differences. Empirical studies to date clearly identify navigation as an aspect of cognitive function that is vulnerable to the aging process. The few functional and structural neuroimaging studies that speak to neurological correlates of these age-related differences point to the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus (retrosplenial cortex), parietal lobes and pre-frontal cortex as structures critically involved in age effects on navigation. Outstanding issues in the field are addressed and productive avenues of future research are suggested. Among these outstanding issues include the necessity of performing longitudinal studies and differentiating between hippocampal and extra-hippocampal contributions to aging in navigation. The field may also be advanced by empirical assessment of navigational strategies and investigations into the multisensory nature of navigation including assessing the relative contributions of visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive function to age differences in navigational skill.

Review of safety and mobility issues among older pedestrians

“…Globally, the ability to navigate and orientate oneself decline with aging (for reviews, see Klencklen et al, 2012;Moffat, 2009). This lesser efficiency, which leads to more errors and longer execution times, is observed not only in situations where a predefined plan exists (Sanders and Schmitter-Edgecombe, 2012; but see Allain et al, 2005), but also in the absence of a predefined plan, e.g., in real-life or in unknown virtual environments such as a medical center or a supermarket (e.g., Head and Isom, 2010;Kirasic, 1991;Wilkniss et al, 1997;Zakzanis et al, 2009).…”

A complex dietary supplement augments spatial learning, brain mass, and mitochondrial electron transport chain activity in aging mice

“…Aging humans display progressive loss of spatial navigation skills (Moffat 2009) accentuated in those with even mild AD (Grossi et al 2007;Hodges 2006;Widmann et al 2011). Neurobiological and behavioral manifestations of cognitive decline relevant to humans are shared by several animal models (Gallagher and Nicolle 1993) including those genetically engineered to express attributes of human pathologies such AD (e.g., Adlard et al 2005;Jankowski et al 2005;Herring et al 2008).…”

As the world turns: Short-term human spatial memory in egocentric and allocentric coordinates

“…Despite fundamental differences in the sensory information that is available and possibly integrated into the spatial representation of the part of the world that the subject is experiencing under real world versus virtual environments, researchers have generally considered that when subjects effectuate a viewpoint change in virtual reality (either by pushing arrow buttons on a keyboard or by manipulating a joystick), they actually imagine themselves moving, rather than imagining an array of objects and landmarks rotating around them [12]. Few experiments, however, have directly compared subject performance in order to determine whether the brain performs equivalently in these two differing conditions (see Moffat [17] for a review).…”