Long before a person forgets a name or loses a word, they may find themselves standing in a familiar street, uncertain of which way is home. Researchers at Flinders University have given clinicians a way to hear that quieter warning: the SPAM Questionnaire, a structured self-reporting tool that measures spatial navigation difficulties — the kind that precede memory loss in Alzheimer's disease — validated across 940 older adults and now moving toward broader clinical adoption. It is a small instrument with a large ambition: to catch dementia not at its loudest, but at its first, barely audible
New spatial navigation test offers early dementia detection breakthrough
Early detection through spatial navigation assessment could help families plan safety measures for individuals with emerging dementia before significant navigational deficits occur.