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A group of worldwide virtual reality and health-care researchers have decided to combine their efforts in a multidisciplinary project titled VETERAN – virtual environments in the diagnosis, prevention and intervention of age-related diseases. The main goal of the VETERAN project is the tuning and testing of different virtual environments, designed to address the cognitive/functional impairments that may occur due to the aging process and age-related disorders. In particular the developed modules will address the problems commonly found in the following pathologies that have a strong impact on the elderly health care policy: Alzheimer’s disease and other senile dementias; stroke and unilateral spatial neglect; mobility-related accidents within specific environments (e.g., falls, shocks). The project will focus on research into clinical aspects of age-related diseases and disorders of high morbidity and specifically target goals of prevention, treatment, or delay in onset. Another goal of the VETERAN project is to define and develop new protocols and tools to be used for general rehabilitation purposes. These tools will aim to provide systematic restorative training within the context of functionally relevant, ecologically valid simulated environments This approach is hoped to optimize the degree of transfer of training and/or generalization of learning to the person’s real world environment. (Less)

An immersive virtual reality (IVR) paradigm to assess cognitive flexibility and problem solving was used to document everyday life-coping failures in a patient with cognitive sequelae of an anterior left thalamic stroke. Three years after the ischemie event, the patient was showing clear signs of frontal lobe dysfunction when left unsupervised in real-life settings, yet his performance on traditional neuropsychological tests tapping frontal functions was unremarkable. We speculated, and provided evidence, that his conduct was influenced by the setting and the presence of an examiner who would strengthen his impaired ability to self-generate control over a number of higher order cognitive activities. Thanks to the immersive effect and nonverbal aspects of the interaction provided by IVR, we could document our patient's cognitive difficulties on two separate occasions. The reasons why IVR was superior to traditional tests are analyzed with reference to well-known cognitive models of the way frontal networks...

The technology of virtual reality (VR) has been used to develop interactive programs that simulate everyday life environments, where healthy subjects and patients with central nervous system dysfunctions are asked to carry out tasks that probe incidental memory and executive functions. The results of three studies support previous claims that VR-based tests overcome several limitations of traditional paper-and-pencil tests, are at least as sensitive to target cognitive impairments, while providing a richer range of opportunities for measuring behavior. Preliminary analyses also suggest that results of VR-based memory tests are replicable across laboratories and subjects samples and that the technology is well-accepted and tolerated by both healthy and impaired subjects.