Can Immersive Virtual Reality help in the Assessment and Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease?

What is it about?

We completed a Systematic Review to evaluate whether Immersive Virtual Reality (iVR) is acceptable and useful in the Assessment and Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

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Why is it important?

Alzheimer's Disease is the most common form of dementia in the world and affects of many millions of patients and their families. We do not have any effective treatment to modify the progression of disease. Focus is now on identifying Alzheimer's disease as early as possible to try and modify outcomes and providing support to those already affected. iVR allows an individual to enter a computer generated world which they control intuitively. Depending on the goal this environment can be configured to challenge or support their spatial navigation and cognition. As we know spatial navigation is affected early in Alzheimer's Disease the technology can be used to formally assess potential deficits. The relative efficacy of iVR for assessment and and the value of iVR in the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease is not well defined. Other reviews have looked at this area more broadly but none specifically at immersive technology which has the most powerful potential to engage patients intuitively and support their early deficits in spatial navigation affected as part of their disease process. We found that iVR is emerging as a viable method of assessing older adults and people with AD. Strongest benefits were seen when closely integrated with theoretical models of neurodegeneration and existing screening methods. Further randomized controlled trials integrated with clinical populations are required. This will consolidate the power of iVR for assessment of MCI and clarify treatment efficacy beyond current applications in physical rehabilitation.

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