Human Analogue of the Morris Water Maze for Testing Subjects at Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Background: Patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have difficulties with spatial orientation. Objective: To test hypothesis that spatial navigation is impaired early in MCI patients representing the presymptomatic stage of AD. Methods: We tested patients with probable AD (n = 21), MCI, further classified according to Petersen’s criteria as amnestic MCI (aMCI) single domain (n = 11), aMCI multiple domain (n = 31), or nonamnestic MCI (n = 7). The aMCI group was also stratified using cued recall according to Dubois’ criteria into memory impairment of the hippocampal type (n = 10) and isolated memory retrieval impairment-nonhippocampal (n = 32) and also according to ApoE4 status into E4+ (n = 12) and E4– (n = 30). These patients and controls (n = 28) were tested in the human variant of the Morris water maze. Depending on the subtest, the subjects could use the egocentric or allocentric (hippocampus-dependent) navigation. Results: The AD and aMCI multiple domain groups were impaired in all subtests. The aMCI single domain group was impaired in allocentric subtests. The hippocampal MCI group performed poorer than the nonhippocampal MCI group and similarly to the AD group. The ApoE4+ group was as bad as the AD group when compared with the E4– group. Conclusion: aMCI subjects represent a very heterogeneous population, and spatial memory or cued recall examination can add more value to aMCI classification. ApoE4+ patients are more impaired than ApoE4– patients.

Spatial Navigation Impairment in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease

“…This suggests that together with the decline in other domains, but before progression to AD, the impairment includes even simpler forms of navigation, presumably not dependent on the MTL. Similar pattern of impairment mainly in allocentric navigation was described in our previous studies in the AD group, which was broadly defined mainly by severe memory problems (Kalova et al, 2005;Laczo et al, 2010). The view of multiple domain based disorientation in MCI patients was supported by several other reports.…”

Effect of Probiotics on Central Nervous System Functions in Animals and Humans: A Systematic Review

“…For spatial memory, there are computerized versions of the Morris water maze (VMWT) and the Blue Velvet Arena (BVA), which is also a variant of the Morris water maze for humans. [83][84][85][86] For non-spatial memory, object recognition tasks and fear conditioning have been used widely in humans. These memory tasks can be conducted in combination with neuroimaging experiments, such as fMRI and magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiments.…”

Spatial Navigation and APOE in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

“…In our study, we investigated the effect of ε4 on spatial navigation in aMCI patients using a real-space human analogue of the MWM. Specifically, we build on our preliminary findings suggesting that, overall, ε4 carriers may exhibit poorer spatial navigation performance than non-ε4 carriers [13] and extend these findings by (a) examining the ability of spatial navigation learning over 8 consecutive trials, (b) testing ε4 status in relation to spatial navigation performance while adjusting for potential confounding by free memory recall, and (c) exploring the differences in age, memory, executive, visuospatial and global cognitive functions among ε4 versus non-ε4 carriers.…”