Spatial Cognition Laboratory

The Spatial Cognition Laboratory focuses on assessing spatial orientation in patients in early stages of neurodegenerative brain diseases. The laboratory is equipped with a unique device – the Human Analogue of the Morris Water Maze, which is used for examining spatial orientation in a real-world environment. Additionally, the laboratory employs virtual environment tasks that replicate real-life situations to identify disruptions in spatial orientation during everyday activities, such as navigating a city or finding one's way in a supermarket.

The examination of spatial orientation also includes eye movement recording, which allows for a detailed analysis of cognitive processes during visual exploration of the surrounding space. This comprehensive approach provides in-depth insights into spatial orientation capabilities and helps detect cognitive deficits associated with neurodegenerative conditions.

Spatial orientation relies on brain regions that are affected in very early stages of neurodegenerative diseases, including the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and parietal cortex. Atrophy in these regions is directly linked to the severity of spatial orientation impairment, making its assessment valuable for early and differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. In recent years, in line with new possibilities for causal treatment, our research has focused primarily on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Our recent studies have demonstrated that spatial orientation impairment can serve as an early cognitive marker of this disease.

Currently, the laboratory's research is expanding to include the differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia with Lewy bodies, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and newly described clinical entities that resemble Alzheimer's disease, including Primary Age-Related Tauopathy (PART) and Limbic-Predominant Age-Related TDP-43 Encephalopathy (LATE) (Vyhnalek, Laczó et Laczó, 2024).

Human Analogue of the Morris Water Maze

In recent studies, we have demonstrated that spatial orientation impairment is associated with the atrophy of brain regions affected early in Alzheimer's disease and with levels of pathological proteins in cerebrospinal fluid characteristic of the disease. Poor performance in this task was also directly linked to difficulties with spatial orientation in patients' everyday lives (e.g., navigating their home city or learning new routes) (Laczó et al., 2024).

Virtual City

In this task, patients navigate a realistic virtual city where they are guided through several intersections and their task is to remember the route and subsequently travel the route independently. In a recent study, we showed that spatial orientation assessment using this task can differentiate patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease from those with cognitive deficit due to other conditions (Laczó et al., 2022).

The Virtual City task includes eye-tracking technology, allowing for precise measurement of patients' eye movements, which provides additional important insights into patients´ spatial orientation abilities. Our recent findings indicated that patients with Alzheimer's disease pay less attention to crucial landmarks in their surroundings, which subsequently impairs their ability to orient themselves correctly (Laczó et al., 2021).