This new test for Alzheimer's looks like a video game. Here's how it works

SALT LAKE CITY – With a virtual reality helmet, you can fly a spaceship, hunt zombies and fight crime as a Batman. Now you can also find out if you are at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

A recent study from the University of Cambridge in the UK revealed that early signs of Alzheimer's disease can be detected by measuring a person's ability to navigate a virtual world.

The entorhinal cortex of the brain is used for navigation and is one of the first regions affected by the disease, according to the study published May 28 in Brain, a neurology journal. That is why the loss is often one of the first symptoms. Patients usually do not develop significant memory loss several years after the onset of the disease and a significant portion of brain cells have degenerated.

"We know that Alzheimer's disease affects the brain long before the symptoms become apparent," Dennis Neur, the neuroscientist who led the experiment, told Science Daily. "We are reaching the point where everyday technologies can be used to detect the warning signs of the disease long before we become aware of it."

In the future, current technologies such as mobile phone applications and virtual reality headsets could be used to diagnose Alzheimer's disease at a much lower cost than that of brain analysis. and other current diagnostic methods, Chan added. Inexpensive but accurate tests will help more people to get an early diagnosis, which could improve the effectiveness of future treatments.

According to the World Health Organization, Alzheimer's is the fifth leading cause of death in the world and there is no cure. Symptoms include memory loss, difficulty communicating, confusion, depression, and paranoia. In 2019, according to the Alzheimer Association, Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia will cost the nation $ 290 billion.

The Cambridge University study examines only one of many ways the technology is used to try to detect Alzheimer's disease or help people with Alzheimer's disease. Virtual reality has also been used to stimulate the memory of patients with Alzheimer's disease and help family members and caregivers understand what is dementia by allowing them to see the world through the eyes of a patient.

In Wired, Lucy Johnston wrote about caring for her grandmother and her hope that companies like Virtue Health, based in the UK, produce virtual reality content that helps patients remember their past experiences. , will bring relief to people with Alzheimer's disease.

"The disease is gradually settling in, with just a small hint of confusion and memory loss at first, like getting lost on its 50-meter walk from the bus stop," wrote Johnston about his grandmother. "But it has become more and more brutal with time."

"I am optimistic for a world in which, until a preventive treatment is found, dealing with dementia is not such a terrible and isolating experience," she added.

Virtue's LookBack app features virtual scenes sorted by destination, theme, activity and decade to create memories and quick conversations. For example, users can choose to visit Brighton Beach in the 1970s.

"It's only now that the phone in your pocket is sufficiently advanced and virtual reality headphones are reduced, which allows us to really democratize access to this kind of powerful therapy," co-founder and co-founder Wired told IRIN. Chief Technology Officer of Virtue, Virtue.

The first signs of Alzheimer's disease

Participants in the Cambridge University study were invited to don a virtual reality helmet similar to that used by computer gamers.

They found themselves in a variety of virtual environments with different landscapes and were invited to follow an L-shaped path to three different locations. The locations were marked by cones at eye level numbered one, two and three.

Upon reaching cone three, a message prompted participants to return to cone one, now unmarked. When they reached what they thought was the right place, participants pulled a trigger from a handheld controller who recorded their location and ended the experiment.

"You simply place the headset on your face as a pair of goggles and you are immediately placed in your virtual environment," said Coco Newton, a PhD student who has worked on the study, at the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Institute. whether those who will test less well will develop Alzheimer's disease later in life. "

Forty-five patients with mild cognitive impairment were recruited from Cambridge University Hospitals for the study, in addition to 41 healthy control subjects. Some of the subjects with mild cognitive impairment were subjected to genetic testing to determine if they possessed a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease.

The study found that not only healthy participants navigated the virtual world better than others, but that among slightly altered participants, those with the biomarker for Alzheimer's disease were acquitting of the task with the least possible precision.

"These findings suggest that a virtual reality virtual navigation test could be more effective at identifying early Alzheimer's disease than the tests we currently use in clinical and research studies," Chan said. at Medical News Today.

Altoida, a biotechnology company headquartered in Houston, has developed similar virtual and augmented reality tools to predict the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Their method is to ask people to place virtual objects in different places and then collect them. At present, the company's technology is only available as a supervised medical test in a medical office, according to TechCrunch.

"While global efforts to introduce effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease are getting closer and closer to success, it is clear that the greatest benefit will accrue to those whose disease is detected early," Jonathan L Liss, director of Columbus Memory Center, who has been using Altoida technology since September 2018, told TechCruch.

Virtual healing

Beyond diagnosis, virtual reality can help Alzheimer's patients find healing and help family and caregivers find empathy.

Another British study from the University of Kent found that virtual reality therapy helped people with dementia to remember their memories, reduce aggression, and improve their interactions with caregivers.

In this study, the researchers allowed patients to visit five therapeutic virtual environments – a cathedral, a countryside, a forest, a sandy beach and a rocky beach – and then monitor them in 16 sessions.

"Virtual reality can clearly have positive effects for dementia patients, their families, and their caregivers. It offers a richer and more satisfying quality of life than the one that exists otherwise, with many positive results, "said Jim Ang Ang, one of the researchers in the study, to Being Patient.

Other virtual reality programs are designed to help people without Alzheimer's to understand what it is. Dementia Australia offers a virtual reality program that plunges users into a life with dementia. Alzheimer's Research UK has created an app called A Walk Through Dementia.

A virtual reality program from Embodied Labs, based in Los Angeles, allows users to see the world through the eyes of a woman named Beatriz who navigates in everyday scenarios at different stages of Alzheimer's disease , reported the Chicago Tribune.

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When she tries to shop, the lights are blinding and the food labels are blurry. When people talk, their words are muffled. Virtual members of her family give her frustrated looks because they do not understand why she always forgets things. Later, in a park, Beatriz becomes paranoid because she thinks her daughter has stolen her purse. And in the later stages of the disease, she calls for help when she hears a rumbling charge and sees a dark silhouette moving erratically, which turns out to be a shadow and sound. a fan, reported the Chicago Tribune.

"You are here and you are watching this and you have a deep impression of what is going on," said Neelum Aggarwal of the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center at the Chicago Tribune. Aggarwal worked as a consultant for Embodied Labs in order to develop Beatriz's history.

"We know there is an emotional connection with something, that the whole experience is enriched and that virtual reality seems to be able to do it."