King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience recently conducted a study on a potential testing method for cognitive decline in adults. The approach was developed in the form of virtual shopping, in which the subjects would be assessed based on their functional cognition. Everyday skills like thinking and processing were evaluated in the experiment based on the program.
VStore Offers An Immersive Virtual Shopping Experience To Tests Cognitive Decline
'VStore,' a virtual reality shopping program, was constructed solely to quantify the potential of people in terms of cognition. Through the application, the participants can perform tasks inspired by real-world activities. The authors of the study believe that the program would be useful for testing age-related cognitive decline.
The study involved 42 healthy people between 20 to 79 years old. During the experiment, the individuals were required to shop and interact with the virtual objects in the simulation.
After the virtual shopping, the participants verbally recalled at least 12 items. The time they took to gather each of the items was also measured. Additional examinations from the virtual shopping involved item selection from a self-checkout machine, payment, and ordering of coffee.
The immersive approach heavily mirrored the everyday activities of real people. According to a MedicalXpress report, the program also resembles the complexities of the progress in each phase of real-world shopping. Through spatial navigation, experts were able to analyze the parts of the collective brain structures active in each participant who entered the virtual activity.
VStore's design may surpass the limitation during the examination of patients and people at risk of cognitive decline. With the activities embedded into the program, scientists could get ahold of the accurate data they need, while providing a cost-effective and engaging test to the subjects.
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Future Evaluation of Cognition via Virtual Reality
Among the interests of the virtual test was to investigate the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex in the brain. These parts are most active during spatial navigations but are usually the first regions affected in the first few phases of Alzheimer's disease development.
The research concluded that VStore can exercise various functions from an individual's neurological system compared to the standard cognitive assessments. Instead of focusing on a single aspect, the specialized virtual reality could simultaneously test numerous brain activities while the subject is immersed with tasks.
King's College London, Kent and Medway Medical School, and National Health Service and Social Care Partnership Trust expert Sukhi Shergill, who also authored the study, said in the report that virtual reality is an advantageous approach for the study of cognition. The tests that resemble real-world activities inside the virtual shop offer a significant reach compared to the pen and paper evaluation methods.
The VStore, according to Shergill, may be suitable for future cognition evaluations. However, the author explained that further developments must be made for their team to confirm the use of the virtual reality program.
The study was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, titled "A Novel Virtual Reality Assessment of Functional Cognition: Validation Study."
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