Clinically normal elderly adults at genetic risk for sporadic Alzheimer’s disease have a path integration deficit

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with cognitive impairment, including spatial disorientation. Disorientation may be an early indicator of AD because spatial navigation relies on entorhinal cortex, the first cortical region affected by AD pathology. To test the hypothesis that spatial navigation declines in preclinical AD, we investigated age and genotype effects on a virtual path integration task, the "Apple Game" (Bierbrauer et al. 2020).