Spatial and non-spatial binding in ageing and Alzheimer's disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Spatial and non-spatial binding in ageing and Alzheimer's disease
IRAS ID
217888
Contact name
Juliana Jezler
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Birmingham
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 31 days
Research summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with difficulties in associative learning (binding skills). 'Associative learning' and 'memory binding' are terms used to describe the capacity to learn and remember the relationship between items such as name and face, and objects and their locations. Binding can be divided into spatial binding, which involves connecting stimuli/responses relating to the position of ourselves and objects in the environment (e.g. learning a route through an unfamiliar building) and non-spatial binding in which the stimuli/responses do not contain any reference to spatial locations (e.g. learning someone’s name).
Studies suggest that spatial tasks are particularly likely to show decline in early AD. However, it is not clear why this is the case. One possibility is that preferential decline in spatial binding abilities may explain this. However, there is no robust evidence that spatial binding is preferentially impaired in AD compared with other types of binding. Moreover, although there is evidence of an age-related decline across a range of binding tasks, few studies have compared performance on different types of binding to see whether ageing affects certain types of binding more than others.
This study aims to directly compare spatial and non-spatial binding tasks in healthy older people and people with AD to see whether there is a preferential decline in spatial compared to non-spatial binding in normal ageing and whether this is even more marked in AD. Data for the healthy older people were collected in a previous study. In this study 26 patients with early AD will perform a set of spatial and non-spatial binding tasks to identify which type of binding (if any) is more susceptible to AD.
The findings of this study may have implications for earlier diagnosis and rehabilitation of AD patients.
REC name
West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/WM/0305
Date of REC Opinion
30 Aug 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion