Improving well-being in patients with major neurodegenerative disorders: differential efficacy of brief social robot-based intervention for 3 neuropsychiatric profiles

Abstract

BackgroundBehavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) affect patients’ daily life and subjective well-being. International recommendations stress nonpharmacological interventions as first-line treatment. While newer psychosocial initiatives adapted to geriatric populations based on social robot therapy have emerged, to our knowledge, no studies on differential efficacy depending on BPSD profiles have been conducted yet.ObjectivesThis pilot study examined the impact of short exposure to a social robot (Paro®) on the subjective emotional well-being of patients with major neurocognitive disorder as well as its impact on differential effects for 3 BPSD profiles.MethodsSeventeen patients with major NCD with apathy (n=6), depression (n=7), and agitation (n=4) were recruited. The intervention was composed of four 15-minute individual sessions. Exposure occurred without the simultaneous presence of a health care provider. A pre–post assessment of emotional well-being was conducted with the International Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Short-Form, which measures positive and negative affectivity.ResultsOverall findings showed a significant increase of positive affectivity (p=0.02). Subgroup analysis demonstrated that agitated patients reduced negative affectivity significantly more than depressed patients (p=0.03). Results also confirmed users’ overall acceptability of the robot.ConclusionThese findings support the usefulness of brief interactive sessions with the Paro robot for elderly patients with major NCD. These preliminary results encourage further research focused on brief interventions using social robotics, as well as on their specific benefits depending on the behavioral typology of patients with neurocognitive disorders.

<p>Management of acute pain in dementia: a feasibility study of a robot-assisted intervention</p>

“…In the present study, slightly more than half of the professionals considered our criteria too wide for eligible patients, but too narrow for available experimental situations. For the future crossover and randomized controlled trial, we plan to eliminate patients with minor neurocognitive disorders as measured by the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE),59 those with severe motor deficits who could not physically interact with the PARO robot and those with negative past experiences with animals, to avoid adverse events during the interaction with PARO, as recommended by our previous work 60. Nevertheless, experimental painful situations will not be restricted to allow future cluster analysis.…”

Social Robot Interventions for People with Dementia: A Systematic Review on Effects and Quality of Reporting

“…The included studies were published between 2012 and 2018. More than half of them were published since 2016 (n = 9, [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]) and were conducted in Australia [37,39,44,45], France [36,41,46], Norway [42,47], Japan [43], the Netherlands [48], New Zealand [38], Spain [35], Sweden [49], and the USA [40].…”

“…Another eight studies were quasi-experimental, four pre-post trials [35,36,41,48] and four pre-post case studies [43,44,46,49]. One pre-post trial used a repeated measures design (ABAB) whereby phase A served as a control group [48].…”

“…The setting was mainly long-term care (n = 10) [35,37,39,40,42,44,45,[47][48][49]. Three studies were conducted in a geriatric hospital [36,41,46], each one of them in a day care center [35], a group home [43], and combined in a day care center and at home [38].…”

3 Do robots care?

“…At the same time, users also demonstrate verbal and non-verbal empathetic reactions towards the machine, whose artificial nature they are not capable of discerning. (Demange et al 2018).…”