Do you get lost easily and GPS is your best friend? Your neurons involved in spatial navigation may be failing! This failure occurs more particularly with age, which explains why older people are more likely to get lost. This is what researchers from the German Center for neurodegenerative diseases. The results of their study appeared in the journal Current Biology.
Specialized neurons that “fatigue”
Navigating through space is one of the most complex abilities of the human mind. The brain must process an immeasurable amount of information: what we see, the contraction of muscles, the sense of balance, the memorization of the path, etc. The researchers’ hypothesis to explain that this ability deteriorates over time is that grid cells are involved in this process. These specialized neurons, discovered in 2005, perform much of the processing of navigation and help recognize its position in space.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers worked with 41 healthy volunteers: 20 “young adults” aged 19 to 30 and 21 “older adults” aged 63 to 81. The first experiment consisted in observing their cerebral activity while they navigated in a setting thanks to a helmet of virtual reality. They found that grid cells were much less active in older people. In a second experiment, the volunteers had to memorize a path and estimate their distance and orientation from their starting point. Results, the young participants better calculated their position during the integration of the path.
A track against neurodegenerative diseases
This discovery could facilitate the early diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders. Indeed, although this impairment of navigational skills can occur in healthy adults, it remains one of the early symptoms of alzheimer’s disease. Assessing the activity of grid cells could also help design treatments to combat age-related cognitive decline.
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