Dr. Vaisakh Puthusseryppady
Spatial navigation is one of the cognitive processes that is affected early in Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
A postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Liz Chrastil’s lab and a REMIND co-chair, Dr. Vaisakh Puthusseryppady published a paper as part of his doctoral research on the use of Global Positioning Software (GPS) to track outdoor movement patterns of people with AD in the community. He found that when alone, participants with AD tended to make fewer outings into the community, and once outside, tended to be more restricted in their movement when compared to their unimpaired counterparts. At UCI, Dr. Puthusseryppady is advancing this work by studying whether alterations in spatial navigation patterns can be an early predictor of AD and in the future, would look into the possibility of using spatial navigation training to reduce AD risk later in life.
To learn more about Dr. Puthusseryppady’s research, visit the Chrastil Lab website and read his recent paper in JMIR Aging.
