Abstract
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.
Highlights
Due to the risen average life-span, we are witnessing a dramatic increase of the incidence of age-related disorders such as dementia, a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with activities of daily living [1]
Participants with dementia had a higher Apathy Inventory compared to Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) participants (t(1,55) = 34.64, p < .001, partial η2 = .39), and, compared to MCI participants, a higher proportion of participants met the diagnostic criteria for the presence of apathy (χ2 = 20.08, p < .001)
The non-parametric Mann-Whitney U tests comparing apathetic and non-apathetic patients revealed that, for the MCI group, there was no difference between apathetic participants (N = 3) and non-apathetic participants (N = 25) in the CDR-SOB score, Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE) score and age
Summary
Due to the risen average life-span, we are witnessing a dramatic increase of the incidence of age-related disorders such as dementia, a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with activities of daily living [1]. Dementia can result from different causes, the most common being Alzheimer's disease (AD), and it is often preceded by a pre-dementia stage, known as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), characterized by a cognitive decline greater than expected for an individual’s age, which does not interfere notably with activities of daily living [2,3]. Virtual Reality in Patients with MCI and Dementia authors [JO], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section
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