Our capacity to recognise places and imagine them from alternative points of view is thought to depend on the hippocampal formation, a part of the brain that is affected during the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease. The Four Mountains Test, developed at UCL and the University of York, is a simple test of this ability and of individual variation in healthy people and patients.

Key features

• Quick and easy to administer
• Resistant to non-spatial strategies
• Sensitive to hippocampal pathology 

References

Hartley, T., Bird, C. M., Chan, D., Cipolotti, L., Husain, M., Vargha‐Khadem, F., & Burgess, N. (2007). The hippocampus is required for short‐term topographical memory in humans. Hippocampus, 17(1), 34-48.

Bird, C. M., Chan, D., Hartley, T., Pijnenburg, Y. A., Rossor, M. N., & Burgess, N. (2010). Topographical short‐term memory differentiates Alzheimer's disease from frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Hippocampus, 20(10), 1154-1169.

Pengas, G., Patterson, K., Arnold, R. J., Bird, C. M., Burgess, N., & Nestor, P. J. (2010). Lost and found: bespoke memory testing for Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 21(4), 1347-1365.

Hartley, T., & Harlow, R. (2012). An association between human hippocampal volume and topographical memory in healthy young adults. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6.

Hartley, T., Lever, C., Burgess, N., & O'Keefe, J. (2014). Space in the brain: how the hippocampal formation supports spatial cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 369(1635), 20120510.

Moodley, K. K., Minati, L., Contarino, V. E., Prioni, S., Wood, R., Cooper, R., D'Incerti, L., Tagliavini, F., & Chan, D. (2015). Diagnostic differentiation of mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease using a hippocampus‐dependent test of spatial memory. Hippocampus.