UCL project would use VR to evaluate relationship between navigation and AD
Dementia in the progressive neurodegenerative illness is the most prevalent kind.
A virtual reality (VR) game is being used by researchers from University College London (UCL) to test the relationship between navigation and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
The VR game will be used to evaluate participants’ navigation skills in an effort to identify early indicators of neurodegenerative illness, with funding provided by the Wellcome Trust.
Dementia is a neurological disorder that affects about 944,000 individuals in the UK and causes cognitive impairment, including difficulty thinking and making decisions.
AD, which is currently the most prevalent kind of dementia, gradually impairs memory and cognitive abilities.
Join Dementia Research is presently seeking 50 healthy participants for the Virtual Reality Navigation research who are 40 years of age or older, free of pre-existing cognitive disorders, and who are not currently on medications for a mental health problem.
The UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience will host two 90-minute VR gaming sessions for all attendees dubbed Cave Crystal Quest.
During the first session, participants will play a game with VR goggles and have to finish a number of levels before answering a questionnaire about their experiences and how simple they found the game to manage.
Written questionnaires regarding cognitive abilities will be completed by participants in the second session, and the results will be compared by researchers with the information gathered on their navigational skills in the first session.
The information gathered will be utilised to assess a person’s navigational skills in the hopes that comparable online assessments will be created to aid medical professionals in evaluating patients in the early stages of AD by identifying navigational issues such as difficulty finding one’s way or following directions.
Feeling lost is a typical symptom of AD, especially in the early stages of the illness when a person is 65 years of age or older.
Professor Neil Burgess of cognitive and computational neuroscience at UCL believes that finding a way to assess these problems early on could lead to a less invasive diagnosis and tracking of the disorder’s progression than is currently achievable with testing methods.
