Life of Mental Mapping May Build Roadblocks Against Alzheimer’s

(from left to right) May Yuan, PhD and Kristen Kennedy, PhD, MS

Two University of Texas at Dallas researchers — Dr. May Yuan, a geographer and Dr. Kristen Kennedy, a neuroscientist — recently teamed up to investigate whether frequent use of the spatial navigation region of the brain might help fend off the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, a form of dementia that affects nearly 6 million Americans.

“Geospatial information science involves technology that helps people navigate,” Yuan said. “Given that those parts of the brain deal with recognizing places, environments and the routes we take every day and are linked to early Alzheimer’s, I began to wonder what would happen if we exercised those brain regions more.”

The researchers said that if their theory holds up, then cognitive map building might serve as an intervention to dementia or Alzheimer’s and could lead to redesign of GPS navigation systems to drive cognitive map building, instead of simply following the blue dot.