Part of the problem is that we don’t really have a good grasp of how healthy people use these systems, or what they do when they get lost. Deficits in both of these navigation systems appear in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, but the precise way in which they decline isn’t yet fully understood. In contrast, ‘allocentric’ navigation relies on creating and remembering a mental map of an environment, and remembering the location of landmarks in relation to other landmarks. ‘Egocentric’ frames of reference rely on remembering the locations of landmarks in relation to your own body – so, for instance, if you take a fixed route to work, you might learn to turn left at the shop, then turn right when you see the petrol station. Broadly, there are two frames of reference that you can use to do it. Being able to successfully steer your way around different sorts of surroundings is obviously a pretty important skill to have. Space is a problem too – or rather, spatial navigation. It robs people of their future, but more than that, Alzheimer’s disease robs them of their past – short term memory loss is a common indicator, and as the disease progresses, it can eat into memories from earlier in life.īut it’s not just time that’s an issue when it comes to Alzheimer’s disease.

Once a definitive diagnosis has been made, the average life expectancy for patients with the disease is around six years. This is a point that becomes acutely salient in the case of Alzheimer’s disease. Like with many things we take for granted, it’s easy to forget the importance of time until it’s gone. It’s a precious thing, for everyone involved.

Critically, the time that participants are willing to give you in the pursuit of knowledge.

The time that you need to run an experiment. In all its myriad forms, time is invaluable to the scientific process – time to develop ideas, time to write grants. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the few short years that I’ve been a fully-fledged scientist, it’s that time is one of the most valuable commodities that you can give a researcher.

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