Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

The basic question driving this project is of both practical and scientific significance. At present, there is no clear means of distinguishing (or better still, predicting) the transition from pre-dementia (mild cognitive impairment, MCI) to early Alzheimer's disease (EAD). How does one distinguish between late MCI and EAD? Can one use a new approach to sensitively detect early Alzheimer's disease? While reaching and gross motor movements made under direct conditions (the spatial location of the viewed object is the same as the goal of the hand movement, like reaching to pick up an apple) are not impaired in EAD and MCI relative to healthy aging, we have found that as soon as an element of dissociation is introduced into a reaching task (the guiding visual information is dissociated from the required motor act, such as using a computer mouse), EAD performance declines precipitously, and adults with MCI also show a decline in performance, albeit less dramatically. We propose that visuomotor integration for dissociated reaching has strong potential as a measure for the early detection of Alzheimer's disease. The proposed project will fully develop these findings into a neurological assessment tool by assessing the validity and predictability of this measure in clinical populations. Furthermore, this project will involve expanding upon our upper limb findings by investigating how certain aspects of gait might also be affected by cognitive decline and might impact the risk of falling in clinical populations. Together, these data will provide both insight into how neurological disease can affect our brain's ability to transform sensory and cognitive information into accurate movements, and an assessment tool to detect these changes and evaluate the impact that they might have on movements performed in everyday life.