Multidisciplinary neurotechnology holds the promise of understanding and non-invasively treating neurodegenerative diseases. In this preclinical trial on Parkinson's disease (PD), we combined neuroscience together with the nascent field of medical virtual reality and generated several important observations. First, we established the Oculus Rift virtual reality system as a potent measurement device for parkinsonian involuntary hand tremors (IHT). Interestingly, we determined changes in rotation were the most sensitive marker of PD IHT. Secondly, we determined parkinsonian tremors can be abolished in VR with algorithms that remove tremors from patients' digital hands. We also found that PD patients were interested in and were readily able to use VR hardware and software. Together these data suggest PD patients can enter VR and be asymptotic of PD IHT. Importantly, VR is an open-medium where patients can perform actions, activities, and functions that positively impact their real lives - for instance, one can sign tax return documents in VR and have them printed on real paper or directly e-sign via internet to government tax agencies. Lastly, we generated a technical framework wherein movements in the real world can be measured side-by-side with those in virtual reality. With this framework, we observed anecdotal evidence of parkinsonian tremors being reduced in real life when our algorithms abolished digital hand tremors in VR.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders, affecting approximately 6-7 million patients worldwide. Involuntary hand tremor (IHT), one of the cardinal motor symptoms of PD, is extremely debilitating to patients reducing their quality of life. In this study, we combined neuroscience together with the nascent field of medical virtual reality (VR). Our goals were to 1) generate technology to enable PD patients to leapfrog the real life difficulties of living with IHT by entering VR metaverse worlds in which they are tremor-free and can function at new heights, 2) to determine whether lack of tremors in VR modifies central biofeedback mechanisms to non-invasively reduce tremors in real life. We thus generated algorithms that adjusted the moving average centroid of digital hands to stabilize tremors in VR. We implemented these algorithms in the Oculus Rift VR system and enrolled nine subjects with PD in a trial that yielded several important observations. First, we established the Oculus Rift as a potent measurement device for IHT. Secondly, we determined parkinsonian tremors can be abolished in VR with algorithms that removed up to 99% of tremors from PD subjects' digital hands (76% average reduction). These data suggest PD subjects can enter VR and be asymptomatic of PD IHT. To test whether our algorithms have measurable practical utility, we created a VR painting application, FingerPaint, and tested it against TiltBrush the leading VR painting application. We empirically demonstrate that complex freeform art created in FingerPaint had up to 51% reduction in tremor-associated parkinsonian drawing irregularities (24% average reduction). Lastly, we generated a technical framework wherein movements in the real-world can be measured side-by-side with those in VR. With this framework, we observed real life parkinsonian tremors were significantly reduced by up to 87% in real life when our algorithms abolished digital hand tremors in VR (35% average reduction). This reduction was observed in 78% of subjects and was progressive as subjects had increasingly reduced real life tremors the longer they were in VR.
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