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| Home > Publications Database > Compromised Grid-Cell-like Representations in Old Age as a Key Mechanism to Explain Age-Related Navigational Deficits. |
| Home > Publications Database > Compromised Grid-Cell-like Representations in Old Age as a Key Mechanism to Explain Age-Related Navigational Deficits. |
| Journal Article | DZNE-2020-06209 |
; ; ; ; ;
2018
Current Biology Ltd.
London
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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.02.038
Abstract: A progressive loss of navigational abilities in old age has been observed in numerous studies, but we have only limited understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying this decline [1]. A central component of the brain's navigation circuit are grid cells in entorhinal cortex [2], largely thought to support intrinsic self-motion-related computations, such as path integration (i.e., keeping track of one's position by integrating self-motion cues) [3-6]. Given that entorhinal cortex is particularly vulnerable to neurodegenerative processes during aging and Alzheimer's disease [7-14], deficits in grid cell function could be a key mechanism to explain age-related navigational decline. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments in healthy young and older adults. First, in an fMRI experiment, we found significantly reduced grid-cell-like representations in entorhinal cortex of older adults. Second, in a behavioral path integration experiment, older adults showed deficits in computations of self-position during path integration based on body-based or visual self-motion cues. Most strikingly, we found that these path integration deficits in older adults could be explained by their individual magnitudes of grid-cell-like representations, as reduced grid-cell-like representations were associated with larger path integration errors. Together, these results show that grid-cell-like representations in entorhinal cortex are compromised in healthy aging. Furthermore, the association between grid-cell-like representations and path integration performance in old age supports the notion that grid cells underlie path integration processes. We therefore conclude that impaired grid cell function may play a key role in age-related decline of specific higher-order cognitive functions, such as spatial navigation.
Keyword(s): Adult (MeSH) ; Aged (MeSH) ; Aging: pathology (MeSH) ; Cognition: physiology (MeSH) ; Entorhinal Cortex: physiology (MeSH) ; Female (MeSH) ; Grid Cells: physiology (MeSH) ; Humans (MeSH) ; Male (MeSH) ; Spatial Memory: physiology (MeSH) ; Spatial Navigation: physiology (MeSH)
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