Jason Barton, BCNAR Seed Grant Recipient, Helps Develop Online Tests to Assess People’s Orientation Skills
Researchers develop online tests to assess people’s orientation skills: Could lead to therapies for developmental topographical disorientation.
Learning about an environment activates the hippocampus in the brain (shown in colour).Helping people find answers as to why they get lost even within their own homes and neighbourhoods is the continuing work of Jason Barton and Giuseppe Iaria, formerly a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Barton and now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Calgary. With the assistance of Tali Cherniawsky and Dylan Sargent from the University of Victoria, they have developed a series of online tests to assess important cognitive skills, including the use of different strategies for orientation. The tests are available to everyone.
Last year, Drs. Iaria and Barton documented the first case of a patient who, without apparent brain damage or other cognitive impairment, was unable to orient within any environment. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging together with behavioural studies to assess and characterize the navigational deficiencies of the patient, they found that the patient had never developed specific orientation skills. Drs. Iaria and Barton referred to this newly discovered cognitive disorder as developmental topographical disorientation (DTD), defining it as a condition in which people experience daily orientation problems in the absence of any brain damage, neurological conditions, or cognitive impairment. This work garnered considerable local, national, and international media attention and prompted more than 400 people from around the world to come forward and self-identify as having the disorder.
Now, Drs. Iaria and Barton have developed online tests that characterize peoples’ navigational difficulties. The researchers are hoping that more people—including those who have no navigational difficulties as well as those who self-identify with the disorder—will complete the online tests.
Currently, upon completing the tests, participants receive their scores and explanations about what ability each test assesses. As more participants complete the tests, the researchers hope to collect enough data so that in the future they can provide participants with more detailed feedback and to define the navigational performance as pathological or as within healthy parameters. Drs. Iaria and Barton also hope to translate their investigation of this disorder into rehabilitation treatments for those who are affected.
The research is supported by the BC Network for Aging Research, Alzheimer Society of Canada, and Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. Assistance in the initial stages of research was provided by Nicholas Bogod and Dean Foti in the Division of Neurology at UBC.
For further information please visit www.brain.ubc.ca/updates