Cognitive evaluation for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease based on Turing Test and Virtual Environments

Abstract

Alzheimer's screening tests are commonly used by doctors to diagnose the patient's condition and stage as early as possible. Most of these tests are based on pen-paper interaction and do not embrace the advantages provided by new technologies. This paper proposes novel Alzheimer's screening tests based on virtual environments and game principles using new immersive technologies combined with advanced Human Computer Interaction (HCI) systems. These new tests are focused on the immersion of the patient in a virtual room, in order to mislead and deceive the patient's mind. In addition, we propose two novel variations of Turing Test proposed by Alan Turing as a method to detect dementia. As a result, four tests are introduced demonstrating the wide range of screening mechanisms that could be designed using virtual environments and game concepts. The proposed tests are focused on the evaluation of memory loss related to common objects, recent conversations and events; the diagnosis of problems in expressing and understanding language; the ability to recognise abnormalities; and to differentiate between virtual worlds and reality, or humans and machines.The proposed screening tests were evaluated and tested using both patients and healthy adults in a comparative study with state-of-the-art Alzheimer's screening tests. The results show the capacity of the new tests to distinguish healthy people from Alzheimer's patients.

The Multidisciplinary Approach to Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia. A Narrative Review of Non-Pharmacological Treatment

“…Research is currently focusing on the design of VR based tests aimed to be more ecological and sensitive compared to common pen-and-paper tests. A recent study proposed a novel AD screening tests based on virtual environment and game principles to evaluate memory loss for common objects and recent events, and language changes (339).…”

The Study of Evaluation and Rehabilitation of Patients With Different Cognitive Impairment Phases Based on Virtual Reality and EEG

“…AD patients could be diagnosed based on their memory of verbal material and spatial scenery within VR (Widmann et al, 2012 ). Screening tests within virtual-room game include language expression and understanding (Montenegro and Argyriou, 2015 , 2017 ). In addition, interviews with patients in VR environments could be used to evaluate frontotemporal dementia (Mendez et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Virtual reality (VR) has been reported to re-activate and/or improve multiple cortical functions (Baumann et al, 2003 ; Lin et al, 2008 ; Schedlbauer et al, 2014 ; Carrieri et al, 2016 ) and help optimize the coding efficiency of the sensory cortex (Ansuini et al, 2006 ; Keller et al, 2012 ; Ravassard et al, 2013 ; Schindler and Bartels, 2013 ; Sofroniew et al, 2015 ). Therefore, many researchers have started applying the VR technology to the EAR of PDCIP (Buss, 2009 ), including spatial memory (Allison et al, 2016 ), episodic memory (Valladares-Rodriguez et al, 2017 ), activities of daily living (Seo et al, 2017 ), language (Montenegro and Argyriou, 2017 ), executive function (Tost et al, 2014 ), short-term and working memory (Burdea et al, 2013 ), attention (Kalová et al, 2005 ), movement and balance (McEwen et al, 2014 ), and outdoor activities (Van Schaik et al, 2008 ). For EAR of PDCIP, the advantages of using VR over conventional approaches, such as electroencephalogram (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and neuropsychological tasks, have been reported (Tarnanas et al, 2014a , b , 2015a ).…”

The Emergent Role of Virtual Reality in the Treatment of Neuropsychiatric Disease

“…Associated with specific exercises, VR assisted rehabilitation becomes interesting for both social and functional rehabilitation (Laver et al, 2015 ; Dockx et al, 2016 ; White and Moussavi, 2016 ; Fernandez Montenegro and Argyriou, 2017 ). The overall system using a treadmill or an exoskeleton plus a chosen specific virtual environment might have an important impact for post-traumatic injuries or diseases with neuromuscular disturbances and degeneration (Villiger et al, 2013 ; Pietrzak et al, 2014 ).…”