Using a virtual environment to assess cognition in the elderly

Abstract

Early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is essential if treatments are to be administered at an earlier point in time before neurons degenerate to a stage beyond repair. In order for early detection to occur tools used to detect the disorder must be sensitive to the earliest of cognitive impairments. Virtual reality (VR) technology offers opportunities to provide products which attempt to mimic daily life situations, as much as is possible, within the computational environment. This may be useful for the detection of cognitive difficulties. We develop a virtual simulation designed to assess visuospatial memory in order to investigate cognitive function in a group of healthy elderly participants and those with a mild cognitive impairment. Participants were required to guide themselves along a virtual path to reach a virtual destination which they were required to remember. The preliminary results indicate that this virtual simulation has the potential to be used for detection of early AD since significant correlations of scores on the virtual environment with existing neuropsychological tests were found. Furthermore, the test discriminated between healthy elderly participants and those with a mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

A Succinct Overview of Virtual Reality Technology Use in Alzheimer’s Disease

“…Several software technologies have been introduced into dementia care to assist patients and their families by providing memory aids and educational support (García-Betances et al, 2014 ). Virtual reality (VR), a recent branch of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), has been suggested for use in some areas of neuropsychology (Rizzo et al, 2001 ; Schultheis et al, 2002 ; Rizzo and Kim, 2005 ; Coyle et al, 2014 ; Lesk et al, 2014 ; Shah et al, 2015 ). Treatment of phobias, stress, and anxiety are characteristic examples of current VR applications in psychotherapy (Esteves and Vidal, 2004 ; Riva, 2005 ; Gregg and Tarrier, 2007 ; Hartanto et al, 2014 ; McCann et al, 2014 ; Paliokas et al, 2014 ; Smahaj and Prochazka, 2014 ; Fornells-Ambrojo et al, 2015 ).…”

The Current Research of Spatial Cognitive Evaluation and Training With Brain–Computer Interface and Virtual Reality

“…For MCI patients, the missing ability to orientation in virtual space (Morganti et al, 2013) and virtual supermarket (Tu et al, 2015;Zygouris et al, 2017) can help us to screen them from all subjects (Zygouris et al, 2017). In addition, the virtual path navigation can be used to evaluate their visual spatial memory (Lesk et al, 2014), and virtual room location search can be used to detect their obstacles in spatial navigation (Serino et al, 2015).…”

The Study of Evaluation and Rehabilitation of Patients With Different Cognitive Impairment Phases Based on Virtual Reality and EEG

“…In addition, Pengas et al found the relationship between topographic memory capacity and regional neurodegeneration in AD patients using a virtual route-learning test (Pengas et al, 2012 ). For MCI patients, a virtual road-navigation task was used to evaluate visual-spatial memory (Lesk et al, 2014 ), and a virtual room-location-searching task was used to detect the impairments of egocentric and allocentric spatial-navigation (Serino et al, 2015 ). In rehabilitation, virtual memory palaces could improve the living quality and memory of AD patients (Bormans et al, 2016 ), and a VR building-navigation game could enhance their driving skills and daily cognitive abilities (White and Moussavi, 2016 ).…”