Study: Harnessing a virtual reality brain training game to diagnose mild cognitive impairment (MCI)

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virtual supermarket.

Vir­tu­al real­i­ty brain train­ing game can detect mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment, a con­di­tion that often pre­dates Alzheimer’s dis­ease (press release):

“Geek researchers demon­strat­ed the poten­tial of a vir­tu­al super­mar­ket cog­ni­tive train­ing game as a screen­ing tool for patients with mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) among a sam­ple of old­er adults…

In an arti­cle pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease, the researchers have indi­cat­ed that the vir­tu­al super­mar­ket (VSM) appli­ca­tion displayed…a lev­el of diag­nos­tic accu­ra­cy sim­i­lar to stan­dard­ized neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests, which are the gold stan­dard for MCI screen­ing. Patients with MCI can live inde­pen­dent­ly and not all such patients progress to AD. There­fore the glob­al effort against cog­ni­tive dis­or­ders is focused on ear­ly detec­tion at the MCI stage…

The use of the VSM as a robust screen­ing test could have pro­found impli­ca­tions for the diag­no­sis and treat­ment of MCI, the most impor­tant of which is the pos­si­bil­i­ty for auto­mat­ed remote MCI screen­ing. The per­for­mance of old­er adults play­ing such a game at home could be mon­i­tored and an algo­rithm embed­ded in the game could inform them when their per­for­mance sug­gests pos­si­ble cog­ni­tive impair­ment due to MCI, prompt­ing them to vis­it an appro­pri­ate health service. ”

Study: Can a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Appli­ca­tion Ful­fill a Dual Role? Using the Vir­tu­al Super­mar­ket Cog­ni­tive Train­ing Appli­ca­tion as a Screen­ing Tool for Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment (Jour­nal of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease). From the abstract:

  • Back­ground: Recent research advo­cates the poten­tial of vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR) appli­ca­tions in assess­ing cog­ni­tive func­tions high­light­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using a VR appli­ca­tion for mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) screening.
  • Objec­tive: The aim of this study is to inves­ti­gate whether a VR cog­ni­tive train­ing appli­ca­tion, the vir­tu­al super­mar­ket (VSM), can be used as a screen­ing tool for MCI.
  • Results: VSM dis­played a cor­rect clas­si­fi­ca­tion rate (CCR) of 87.30% when dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between MCI patients and healthy old­er adults, while it was unable to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between MCI sub­types. At the same time, the VSM cor­re­lates with var­i­ous estab­lished neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal tests. A lim­it­ed num­ber of tests were able to improve the CCR of the VSM when com­bined with the VSM for screen­ing purposes.
  • Dis­cus­sion: VSM appears to be a valid method of screen­ing for MCI in an old­er adult pop­u­la­tion though it can­not be used for MCI sub­type assess­ment. VSM’s con­cur­rent valid­i­ty is sup­port­ed by the large num­ber of cor­re­la­tions between the VSM and estab­lished tests. It is con­sid­ered a robust test on its own as the inclu­sion of oth­er tests failed to improve its CCR significantly.

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