Association between Cognitive Function and Spatial-Temporal Measures of Gait and Balance when Navigating a Virtual Reality Floor Maze

Spatial navigation has been used as a behavioral marker of cognitive impairments. Floor Maze Tests (FMT) are used to characterize navigation where subjects physically move through a two-dimensional maze drawn on the floor. A Virtual Reality version of FMT (VR-FMT) has been developed, which provides a 3-dimensional navigation environment where the height of the maze walls can be altered. For both FMT and VR-FMT, the time used to complete the maze has been reported as the outcome measure to characterize the cognitive function. This study aims to show new performance metrics derived from spatial-temporal gait and balance parameters during navigation through the maze and their association with the cognitive scores in subjects with probable dementia. Sixty-five older adults with probable dementia participated in an experiment where subjects walked in VR-FMT with two wall heights, 2 centimeters (no wall condition) and 2 meters (wall condition). Our results showed that in no wall condition, the gait and balance parameters during navigation were associated with cognitive scores measuring attention and executive function. In wall condition, besides attention and executive function, gait parameters showed a correlation with the scores of the auditory memory. This paper showed that the spatial-temporal gait and balance parameters during spatial navigation are important metrics of cognitive function in addition to the completion time. VR-FMT with walls can help identify early memory impairments in individuals.