Missing the egocentric spatial reference: a blank on the map [version 1; referees: awaiting peer review]

Egocentric (self-centered) and allocentric (viewpoint independent) representations of space are essential for spatial navigation and wayfinding. Deficits in spatial memory come with age-related cognitive decline, are marked in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and are associated with cognitive deficits in autism. In most of these disorders, a change in the brain areas engaged in the spatial reference system processing has been documented. However, the spatial memory deficits observed during physiological and pathological aging are quite different. While patients with AD and MCI have a general spatial navigation impairment in both allocentric and egocentric strategies, healthy older adults are particularly limited in the allocentric navigation, but they can still count on egocentric navigation strategy to solve spatial tasks. Therefore, specific navigational tests should be considered for differential diagnosis between healthy and pathological aging conditions. Finally, more research is still needed to better understand the spatial abilities of autistic individuals. Maria Concetta Miniaci ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] : Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation; : Supervision, Validation, Author roles: Miniaci MC De Leonibus E Visualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation No competing interests were disclosed. Competing interests: Miniaci MC and De Leonibus E. How to cite this article: Missing the egocentric spatial reference: a blank on the map [version 1; referees: 2018, :168 (doi: ) awaiting peer review] F1000Research 7 10.12688/f1000research.13675.1 © 2018 Miniaci MC and De Leonibus E. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Licence This study was supported by Bank of Italy grant #744460/13. Grant information: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 09 Feb 2018, :168 (doi: ) First published: 7 10.12688/f1000research.13675.1 1