Boundary based navigation is impaired in old age

Abstract

Decline of hippocampal function with age has many effects, including deficits in episodic memory and spatial orientation. Motivated by research in cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience showing the importance of environmental boundaries in spatial mapping, we tested adult and aged rats in a simple reorientation task involving both environmental boundary geometry and landmarks. We find preliminary evidence that aged rats are impaired in their ability to reorient, particularly with respect to boundary geometry.