Project description
Early Alzheimer’s detection
Memory dysfunction is an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Overshadowing occurs when individuals focus on prominent landmarks, neglecting others, but its impact on asymptomatic individuals at risk for AD is unclear. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SPATIALOS project will investigate how young adults at risk for AD and older adults with and without mild cognitive impairment handle attentional interference during navigation tasks, to improve understanding of navigation variability and aid early detection of AD. It will identify behavioural profiles linked to cognitive decline and the interaction between attention and memory. Using fMRI, the study will analyse neural networks in healthy young adults and assess performance differences in older adults.
Objective
Memory dysfunction is an early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Notably, spatial memory deficits are a key precursor for detecting AD pathophysiology before clinical symptoms emerge, where growing evidence shows that spatial memory deficits precede detection of other long-term memory deficits by years. Selective attention, a key element of navigation, is affected by AD since people preferentially process some aspects of the environment at the expense of others. When multiple landmarks can be used to find a goal, the most salient ones can constrain learning about the others. This is known as Overshadowing (OS). However, little is known about the impact of OS on people who are asymptomatic but at risk of developing AD. I will leverage a robust OS-sensitive navigation task to discriminate individual differences in how young adults (YA) at risk of AD and older adults (OA) with and without MCI overcome interference between different attentional cues to define distinct behavioral fingerprints involving OS by stratifying individuals along the cognitive decline continuum based on attention x memory interactions. I will also determine the neural basis of OS in YA. Three main research objectives (RO) are pursued: RO1) Study OS in attention and memory to define the behavioral phenotypes of 18-40 yo YA at risk of AD (i.e. APOE-ε4), and non-APOE-ε4 YA as a control group (CG). RO2) Assess how attentional and memory neural networks engage in the OS task in healthy 18-40 yo YA without APOE designation (fMRI study). I will later assess if I can tease apart distinct behavioral phenotypes in OS that map onto the at risk and CG. RO3) Define the behavioral phenotypes of healthy OA and MCI participants (60 yo or older). Finally, I will study how their behavioral performance vary along the cognitive decline continuum. This multidisciplinary project will have an impact on the understanding of interindividual variability of OS in navigation for early detection of AD pathophysiology.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences basic medicine neurology neurodegenerative diseases dementia alzheimer
- medical and health sciences basic medicine physiology pathophysiology
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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12006 Castellon De La Plana
Spain
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