GAIT-RELATED NEURAL SIGNATURE OF PRECLINICAL DEMENTIA RISK IN OLDER ADULTS

Difficulties performing complex daily function (CdF) are a core diagnostic feature of dementia syndromes (De Sanctis et al., 2023; Verghese et al., 2023; Verghese et al., 2025). Yet the neural processes supporting CdF particularly during early stages of the dementia continuum remain unclear. We previously used a complex gait task to probe daily function in individuals as risk for mild cognitive impairment, showing that risk is associated with an anterior shift of fronto-parietal activation during complex gait (De Sanctis et al., 2023; De Sanctis et al., 2024).We are extending this framework to link blood-based Alzheimer’s pathology to gait-related EEG responses during walking. We have enrolled more than 150 community-dwelling older adults spanning a range of subclinical Alzheimer’s-related pathology quantified from blood using biomarker index (Meyer et al., 2024; Palmqvist et al., 2024; Coppinger et al., 2025). Participants walk on a treadmill with and without exposure to full-field optical flow perturbation designed to destabilize posture (De Sanctis et al., 2020). We test whether higher APS2 is associated with reduced central beta desynchronization and increased fronto-medial theta synchronization, and whether this neural pattern predicts cognition and CdF trajectories. Preliminary analyses suggest APS2-dependent differences in centro-frontal EEG activity. At the time of abstract submission, analyses are ongoing; final results will be presented at the FENS 2026 conference.