A Feasibility Study with Image-Based Rendered Virtual Reality in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia

• Published in: PloS one 2016-03, Vol.11 (3), p.e0151487-e0151487
• Main Authors: Manera, Valeria, Chapoulie, Emmanuelle, Bourgeois, Jérémy, Guerchouche, Rachid, David, Renaud, Ondrej, Jan, Drettakis, George, Robert, Philippe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activities of daily living; Age; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Alzheimer's disease; Anxiety; Apathy; Attention; Biology and Life Sciences; Cognitive ability; Cognitive disorders; Cognitive Dysfunction - psychology; Cognitive Dysfunction - therapy; Cognitive science; Cognitive tasks; Complications and side effects; Computer and Information Sciences; Computer applications; Computer Science; Dementia; Dementia - psychology; Dementia - therapy; Dementia disorders; Diagnosis; Disease prevention; Engineering and Technology; Fatigue; Fear & phobias; Feasibility Studies; Female; Geriatrics; Graphics; Humans; Impairment; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Memory; Middle Aged; Neural networks; Neuroscience; Older people; Patients; People and Places; Psychomotor Performance; Rehabilitation; Security; Self Report; Social Sciences; Surveys and Questionnaires; Time Factors; Training; Virtual reality; Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy - methods
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151487

Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a promising tool in many domains of therapy and rehabilitation, and has recently attracted the attention of researchers and clinicians working with elderly people with MCI, Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. Here we present a study testing the feasibility of using highly realistic image-based rendered VR with patients with MCI and dementia. We designed an attentional task to train selective and sustained attention, and we tested a VR and a paper version of this task in a single-session within-subjects design. Results showed that participants with MCI and dementia reported to be highly satisfied and interested in the task, and they reported high feelings of security, low discomfort, anxiety and fatigue. In addition, participants reported a preference for the VR condition compared to the paper condition, even if the task was more difficult. Interestingly, apathetic participants showed a preference for the VR condition stronger than that of non-apathetic participants. These findings suggest that VR-based training can be considered as an interesting tool to improve adherence to cognitive training in elderly people with cognitive impairment.