TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bock, Otmar
AU  - Huang, Ju-Yi
AU  - Wigge, Maike
AU  - Bieche, Chiara
AU  - Kehm, Christina
AU  - Richter, Nils
AU  - Fink, Gereon Rudolf
AU  - Onur, Oezguer A
TI  - Route-following deficits in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: Is the dual encoding of route-following strategies impaired?
JO  - Journal of Alzheimer's disease
VL  - 108(2)
IS  - 108(2)
SN  - 1387-2877
CY  - Amsterdam
PB  - IOS Press
M1  - FZJ-2025-03982
SP  - 13872877251378658
PY  - 2025
N1  - post print upload 09.10.25 2025 Nov;108(2):606-615. Epub 2025 Sep 19. This research was funded by the Marga und Walter Boll Foundation (OB: grant number 210-05.01-21; OAO and GRF: grant number 210-08-13).
AB  - BackgroundOne of the earliest signs of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and neurodegenerative dementia (ND) is spatial disorientation, e.g., getting lost on previously familiar routes. Healthy individuals often follow routes by combining two strategies, serial recall of directions and cue-direction associations, but the integration of these two strategies may be degraded in amnestic MCI and ND.ObjectiveTo evaluate whether impaired integration of the two strategies (dual encoding) contributes to the route-following deficits in amnestic MCI.MethodsTwenty-five patients with amnestic MCI and 25 age-matched healthy controls (HC) followed routes through virtual mazes that allowed the use of the serial order strategy only (maze S), the associative cue strategy only (maze A), or both strategies (maze SA).ResultsFor longer routes, accuracy in maze SA exceeded that in mazes S and A, confirming the existence of a dual encoding benefit. The magnitude of this benefit was comparable in both groups. In contrast, performance on an additional dual-task test was poorer in MCI than in HC.ConclusionsWe attribute the dissociation between preserved dual encoding and impaired dual-tasking in amnestic MCI not to fundamental differences in the underlying mechanisms, but rather to the different ecological validity of the two experimental paradigms. Our findings suggest that spatial orientation training in amnestic MCI need not target dual encoding.Keywords: cognitive strategies; decision-making; spatial navigation; wayfinding.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
DO  - DOI:10.1177/13872877251378658
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1046827
ER  -