Marqueurs cognitifs de la maladie d’Alzheimer : intégration du profil socio-démographique et des habitudes de vie pour un dépistage précoce
- Authors
- Publication Date
- Oct 09, 2024
- Source
- HAL
- Keywords
- Language
- English
- License
- Unknown
- External links
Abstract
Context. The rising prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) confronts current issues of diagnostic complexity and regional inequalities in healthcare access. Spatial navigation is a cognitive function that is affected early in AD but is rarely evaluated in clinical practice. For its evaluation to have clinical relevance, a validated and accessible cognitive tool is needed, capable of controlling for "non-pathological" factors (age, gender, education) in order to assess only the pathological component. The Sea Hero Quest (SHQ) project has already established a normative database by collecting data from 4 million people through a spatial navigation video game, but it has measured only a limited number of variables potentially associated with spatial navigation abilities.Objectives. To complete the demographic and cognitive reserve variables that may influence spatial navigation performance during aging and to evaluate whether visual attention (measured by eye-tracking) is associated with spatial navigation strategies.Methodology. Between April 13 and April 28, 2024, we invited visitors to the Musée des Confluences (Lyon) to complete a demographic questionnaire (risk factors, lifestyle habits...) and cognitive reserve assessment. They then played SHQ, testing spatial navigation while their eye movements were recorded (Tobii eye-tracker). We analyzed the relationship between visual exploration of the maze map, age, and cognitive reserve on spatial navigation performance using Pearson correlation tests and multiple linear regressions.Results. We collected data from 293 participants aged 18 to 85 years with no diagnosed cognitive impairment (176 women, mean age = 41.4 years, SD = 16.8). Results indicate a strong decline in spatial navigation performance with age (r = -0.67, p < 0.001). No significant relationship was found between spatial navigation performance and the overall cognitive reserve score, but a negative association was identified with the number of books read. Regarding visual behavior, we observed an increase in map exploration time and eye position dispersion with age.Discussion. These results suggest that cognitive reserve is not associated with spatial navigation performance, while the number of books read is negatively associated. This could be explained by a more sedentary lifestyle among avid readers, leading to less orientation training. Age-related decline in orientation is reflected by longer encoding times and more dispersed eye positions. In future work, we will apply this protocol to patients at the early stage of AD and at-risk healthy subjects (risk assessed by the CAIDE score, APOE status, and p-tau217 levels). Ultimately, these cognitive and blood markers, coupled with a normative database accounting for diverse socio-demographic profiles, could constitute a lightweight and easily deployable approach for early AD detection assistance.
