Older Adults Show Reduced Spatial Precision but Preserved Strategy-Use During Spatial Navigation Involving Body-Based Cues

Abstract

Older adults typically perform worse on spatial navigation tasks, although whether this is due to degradation of memory or an impairment in using specific strategies has yet to be determined. An issue with some past studies is that older adults are tested on desktop-based virtual reality: a technology many report lacking familiarity with. Even when controlling for familiarity, these paradigms reduce the information-rich, three-dimensional experience of navigating to a simple two-dimensional task that utilizes a mouse and keyboard (or joystick) as means for ambulation. Here, we utilize a wireless head-mounted display and free ambulation to create a fully immersive virtual Morris water maze in which we compare the navigation of older and younger adults. Older and younger adults learned the locations of hidden targets from same and different start points. Across different conditions tested, older adults remembered target locations less precisely compared to younger adults. Importantly, however, they performed comparably from the same viewpoint as a switched viewpoint, suggesting that they could generalize their memory for the location of a hidden target given a new point of view. When we implicitly moved one of the distal cues to determine whether older adults used an allocentric (multiple landmarks) or beaconing (single landmark) strategy to remember the hidden target, both older and younger adults showed comparable degrees of reliance on allocentric and beacon cues. These findings support the hypothesis that while older adults have less precise spatial memories, they maintain the ability to utilize various strategies when navigating.

Tau Pathology Profile Across a Parietal-Hippocampal Brain Network Is Associated With Spatial Reorientation Learning and Memory Performance in the 3xTg-AD Mouse

“…The spatial reorientation deficit we observed could explain the cause of spatial disorientation which is one of the first symptoms in humans with AD (Coughlan et al, 2018). Further, spatial navigation tasks like the one employed here can easily be adapted for humans as has been done with a variety of spatial navigation learning and memory tasks (e.g., Puthusseryppady et al, 2020;Mcavan et al, 2021). Our approach for identifying these brain network profiles is unique.…”

The assessment of manual dexterity in selected professional groups, using an original program testing the precision of the upper limb and hand-eye coordination

“…The hippocampus, parahippocampal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, and parietal lobes are thought to have a significant impact on VSF, and are highly susceptible to the effects of ageing, manifesting as a decline in learning ability and executive functioning in older adults. Moreover, maintaining long-term memory and brain plasticity requires gene expression, which is known to decline as the body ages, which may also contribute to the decrease in motor functioning in older people [15]. Interestingly, most biophysical properties of neurons do not change during the ageing process.…”

Clockwise rotation of perspective view improves spatial recognition of complex environments in aging

“…Participants have to understand the flexible relationship between the cues available in the virtual environment to determine positions. Other studies compared spatial perspective-taking abilities in young and old adults, demonstrating that age is related with decay of these skills 17 , 72 . When testing recognition of positions, it was demonstrated that young adults also outperformed old adults 73 – 75 .…”

“…That is, the viewpoint the agents physically preserve is mentally reoriented into alignment with the to-be-adopted viewpoint. As a result, some studies reflect that linearly increasing angular disparities between the original and to-be-adopted perspective translate into more errors 5 , 17 . Also, better response times and accuracy are reported when the novel views of an environment are presented in alignment with previously encoded ones 18 .…”

“…Interestingly, the direction of the rotation could modulate the misalignment effect, as certain studies identified that recognition errors and/or response time increased when perspective rotation followed an anticlockwise direction 17 , 19 . The effect also have a correlate in electroencephalographic data using event-related potentials 20 .…”