Virtual Maze Test Could Predict Alzheimer’s Disease

The early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease will help define preventative intervention strategies. In this regard, a group of neuroscientists at the Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn, Germany, has recently developed a virtual maze test to detect the risk of Alzheimer’s disease decades before the onset of the disease. They tested the virtual maze on participants 18 to 30 years of age and found that those presenting a high genetic risk to develop Alzheimer’s (i.e., expressing the gene APOE -ε4) could be identified based on their performance with the virtual test. In particular, by monitoring the brain activity of each participant during the trial via functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers found that in these subjects the brain cells that control spatial navigation (known as “grid cells”, in the entorhinal cortex) were less functional, which correlates with the risk of spatial disorientation typically observed in Alzheimer's disease patients.