TY  - JOUR
AU  - Segen, Vladislava
AU  - Kabir, Md Rysul
AU  - Streck, Adam
AU  - Slavik, Jakub
AU  - Glanz, Wenzel
AU  - Butryn, Michaela
AU  - Newman, Ehren
AU  - Tiganj, Zoran
AU  - Wolbers, Thomas
TI  - Path integration impairments reveal early cognitive changes in subjective cognitive decline.
JO  - Science advances
VL  - 11
IS  - 36
SN  - 2375-2548
CY  - Washington, DC [u.a.]
PB  - Assoc.
M1  - DZNE-2025-01063
SP  - eadw6404
PY  - 2025
AB  - Path integration, the ability to track one's position using self-motion cues, is critically dependent on the grid cell network in the entorhinal cortex, a region vulnerable to early Alzheimer's disease pathology. In this study, we examined path integration performance in individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), a group at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, and healthy controls using an immersive virtual reality task. We developed a Bayesian computational model to decompose path integration errors into distinct components. SCD participants exhibited significantly higher path integration error, primarily driven by increased memory leak, while other modeling-derived error sources, such as velocity gain, sensory, and reporting noise, remained comparable across groups. Our findings suggest that path integration deficits, specifically memory leak, may serve as an early marker of neurodegeneration in SCD and highlight the potential of self-motion-based navigation tasks for detecting presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease-related cognitive changes.
KW  - Humans
KW  - Cognitive Dysfunction: physiopathology
KW  - Cognitive Dysfunction: diagnosis
KW  - Male
KW  - Female
KW  - Aged
KW  - Bayes Theorem
KW  - Alzheimer Disease: physiopathology
KW  - Cognition
KW  - Entorhinal Cortex: physiopathology
KW  - Middle Aged
KW  - Virtual Reality
KW  - Case-Control Studies
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:40901947
DO  - DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adw6404
UR  - https://pub.dzne.de/record/281102
ER  -