Path integration, the ability to track one's position using self-motion cues, is critically dependent on the grid cell network in the entorhinal cortex, a region vulnerable to early Alzheimer's disease pathology. In this study, we examined path integration performance in individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), a group at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, and healthy controls using an immersive virtual reality task. We developed a Bayesian computational model to decompose path integration errors into distinct components. SCD participants exhibited significantly higher path integration error, primarily driven by increased memory leak, while other modeling-derived error sources, such as velocity gain, sensory, and reporting noise, remained comparable across groups. Our findings suggest that path integration deficits, specifically memory leak, may serve as an early marker of neurodegeneration in SCD and highlight the potential of self-motion-based navigation tasks for detecting presymptomatic Alzheimer's disease-related cognitive changes.

Aging Cognition and Technology Group German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases Magdeburg 39120 Germany

Center for Behavioural Brain Sciences Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg Magdeburg 39120 Germany

Department of Computer Science Indiana University Bloomington USA

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Indiana University Bloomington USA

Institute for Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Research Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg Germany

Institute for Computational Cancer Biology Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital Cologne University of Cologne Köln Germany

The Czech Academy of Sciences Institute of Information Theory and Automation Prague Czech Republic

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bioRxiv. 2025 Feb 18:2025.02.17.638583. doi: 10.1101/2025.02.17.638583. PubMed

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