The entorhinal cortex (EC) and hippocampus are the first cortical regions to exhibit neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and emerging evidence suggests that tau pathology spreads trans-neuronally within the EC-hippocampal circuit before spreading to the neocortex. Detection of initial changes in EC-hippocampal function would therefore aid diagnosis of AD in its very first stages.
To test the hypothesis that EC and hippocampal function are impaired prior to symptom onset in people at risk of AD, this project will utilise knowledge of the roles of the EC and hippocampus in spatial navigation and memory. Immersive virtual reality-based tasks of path integration, object recognition and conjunctive object-location memory will be used to test respectively medial EC, lateral EC and hippocampal function in asymptomatic individuals aged 40-59 with risk factors for AD, recruited to the PREVENT study http://preventdementia.co.uk. 7T MRI scanning will provide ultra high resolution measures of EC-hippocampal structure and connectivity to complement the VR functional data. This project will provide the successful applicant with a background in cognitive neuroscience and training in state of the art behavioural and MRI analyses.
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