Overview

• The DZNE-led study, published in Science Advances, tested 102 adults aged 55–89, including 30 who reported subjective cognitive decline.
• Participants navigated a landmark-free virtual landscape by following a floating ball, then indicated their starting location and original facing direction.
• Individuals with subjective cognitive decline were less accurate on the orientation tasks despite scoring within normal ranges on conventional cognitive assessments.
• Mathematical modelling attributed group differences to a cognitive failure to retain recent positions rather than to walking speed or gaze behavior.
• The pattern points to early entorhinal cortex grid-cell dysfunction, and the team plans to relate performance to blood or cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and simplify the method for use in trials.