Evaluation of Spatial Navigation in MCI patients with a new Tool: a follow up study

Spatial navigation is a complex and multi-componential function necessary for functional living. It includes cognitive and perceptual processes and it refers to the ability to find the right way into an environment and to orient in a familiar or new space. These abilities decline both in normal and pathological aging. In recent studies, topographical disorientation, a specific deficit in spatial orientation, has been considered an important cognitive marker to identify Mild Cognitive Impairment and a prodromal symptom in the possible MCI conversion to Alzheimer's disease. We presented a follow up of the study conducted by Rusconi and colleagues in 2015, with the use of an "Ideal city," a task that aimed to investigate the different processes involved in spatial navigation in patients with Mild Cognitive impairment (MCI), amnesic (aMCI) and non-amnesic (naMCI). As shown in the previous article, this tool proves to be a useful instrument to differentiate the control group from MCI patients and to distinguish aMCI and naMCI through spatial navigation abilities.