Alzheimer's Disease in VR
VR test reveals Alzheimer's disease better than the "gold standard"
Svetlana Maslova, Hi-tech+
In addition to memory problems, Alzheimer's patients have impaired spatial orientation. Scientists used this early sign of the disease to create a playful way to diagnose a dangerous condition in the early stages.
The new virtual reality (VR) technology determines the risks and early stages of brain neurodegeneration better than modern clinical tools. Instead of standard cognitive tests, scientists turned to the symptoms of loss of spatial orientation in patients with the development of Alzheimer's disease and proved the great diagnostic potential of the VR test. Article by Howett et al. The differentiation of mild cognitive impairment using an entorhinal cortex based test of VR navigation is published in the journal Brain.
The study involved 45 patients with mild cognitive impairment, as well as a control group of 41 participants. In the first cohort, an additional analysis of cerebrospinal fluid was performed, which found biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease in 12 people.
Figure from the press release of the University of Cambridge Virtual reality can spot navigation problems in early Alzheimer's disease – VM.
All participants with mild cognitive impairment showed significantly worse results of the navigation test compared to healthy volunteers. A subgroup of 12 people with biomarkers had even worse results.
The test proved to be very effective in determining the degree of risk of the disease.
The VR navigation method determined the increased and decreased risks of future dementia better than a modern set of clinical tools, the authors emphasize.
Scientists believe that VR technology can play a crucial role in the diagnosis and monitoring of Alzheimer's disease in the coming years.
Another group of researchers also used the significance of the symptoms of spatial navigation loss in the early diagnosis of neurodegeneration and created the game Sea Hero Quest (also for virtual reality glasses), whose participants generate a huge amount of data about a person's mental processes during orientation in space, which helps to develop tests to determine dementia.
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