In our first human participant study, we have developed a virtual reality task to help assess navigational ability and overall cognitive function.
Spatial navigation is a behavioural paradigm that can provide insight on brain structures such as the hippocampal formation, that maintains a ‘cognitive map’ of the environment.
In our task, participants will navigate paths in virtual reality, and be asked to remember their start position and the positions of distant landmarks.
Because the hippocampus are heavily affected in the early stages of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), we hope that this task will lead to the creation of a sensitive behavioural biomarker for the early signs of cognitive decline.
Our first participants will be performing the task in Fall 2024:
