Spatial Disorientation in Alzheimer's Disease: The Missing Path From Virtual Reality to Real World

Abstract

Spatial disorientation is one of the earliest symptoms in Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Coughlan et al., 2018), and has been increasingly measured using novel virtual reality (VR) paradigms in lab and clinical settings (Tu et al., 2015; Howett et al., 2019). At the same time, spatial disorientation often leads to AD patients getting lost in the real world (RW), with significant safeguarding and well-being implications (Alzheimer's Association., 2011; Rowe et al., 2015).<br/><br/>Overall, VR studies investigating spatial disorientation focus on underlying neurocognitive factors whilst RW studies highlight more external factors associated with this symptom. However, the link between the neurocognitive and external factors, and specifically how they might relate to each other has been relatively unexplored. We will highlight this gap in the literature by first giving an overview of VR studies of spatial disorientation in AD, before presenting evidence from RW studies of spatial disorientation in the community. Finally, we discuss the missing link between the VR and RW studies in more detail and how future research can overcome the limitations of the current literature.