Newswise — Among the many devastating impacts of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia is the risk that patients will wander and become lost. Indeed, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, six in 10 people with the disease will wander at least once over the course of their illness — and many do so repeatedly.
For researchers who study and treat people with neurodegenerative disorders, understanding the human neural circuitry that leads to such behavior is among the highest-priority goals. But to better study these and other neurological conditions, the work needs to begin with effective, accessible animal models.
That’s where researchers at the NeuroBat lab — led by Michael Yartsev, assistant professor of bioengineering and of neurobiology — come in. Their studies of the neural circuitry of navigation in Egyptian fruit bats are yielding insights that might…
