TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bates, Sarah
AU  - Wolbers, Thomas
TI  - How cognitive aging affects multisensory integration of navigational cues.
JO  - Neurobiology of aging
VL  - 35
IS  - 12
SN  - 0197-4580
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
PB  - Elsevier Science
M1  - DZNE-2020-04041
SP  - 2761-2769
PY  - 2014
AB  - Entorhinal grid cells and hippocampal place cells are key systems for mammalian navigation. By combining information from different sensory modalities, they provide abstract representations of space. Given that both structures are among the earliest to undergo age-related neurodegenerative changes, we asked whether age-related navigational impairments are related to deficient integration of navigational cues. Younger and older adults performed a homing task that required using visual landmarks, self-motion information, or a combination of both. Further, a conflict between cues assessed the influence of each sensory domain. Our findings revealed performance impairments in the older adults, suggestive of a higher noise in the underlying spatial representations. In addition, even though both groups integrated visual and self-motion information to become more accurate and precise, older adults did not place as much influence on visual information as would have been optimal. As these findings were unrelated to potential changes in balance or spatial working memory, this study provides the first evidence that increasing noise and a suboptimal weighting of navigational cues might contribute to the common problems with spatial representations experienced by many older adults. These findings are discussed in the context of the known age-related changes in the entorhinal-hippocampal network.
KW  - Adult
KW  - Aged
KW  - Aged, 80 and over
KW  - Aging: pathology
KW  - Aging: physiology
KW  - Aging: psychology
KW  - Animals
KW  - Cognition: physiology
KW  - Cues
KW  - Entorhinal Cortex: cytology
KW  - Entorhinal Cortex: pathology
KW  - Entorhinal Cortex: physiology
KW  - Female
KW  - Hippocampus: cytology
KW  - Hippocampus: pathology
KW  - Hippocampus: physiology
KW  - Homing Behavior: physiology
KW  - Humans
KW  - Male
KW  - Middle Aged
KW  - Noise
KW  - Sensation: physiology
KW  - Spatial Memory: physiology
KW  - Spatial Navigation: physiology
KW  - Visual Perception: physiology
KW  - Young Adult
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:24952995
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2014.04.003
UR  - https://pub.dzne.de/record/137719
ER  -