Virtual Reality in Cognitive Retraining Rosa Maria Esteves Moreira da Costa Luis Alfredo V. de Carvalho Dóris Ferraz de Aragon COPPE-Systems Engineering Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

The success of computer use in the educational and training areas opens new perspectives for different knowledge domains Health

In the last few years the health fields have been enhanced by new technologies integrated into medical procedures

Only recently has the potential of computers for the study and rehabilitation of human cognitive/functional abilities been recognized

Rehabilitation software Aim to develop human capabilities and to reduce limitations, exploring different technical aids

The initial cognitive rehabilitation tools were specific to treatment of isolated functions and explored situations similar to traditional practices Perception

Virtual Reality-based (VR) software has been thought to be potentially more representative of every-day life situations than paper-and-pencil treatment procedures or limited software

The objective of this work is to describe a virtual environment that explores therapeutic strategies and can act, in an integrated way, in different types of cognitive disorders, offering significant opportunities to the patients to face common day-to-day situations.

Virtual Reality: a tendency in the Cognitive Rehabilitation area

Brain Plasticity The possibility of brain plasticity from environmental stimuli is essential for therapeutic strategies development for many cerebral disorders

Immersion Interaction Presence

AVIRC: An Integrated Virtual Environment for Cognitive Rehabilitation

Environment Objective This research led to the design of an interactive tool to support cognitive ability recover for persons with different cerebral disabilities, exploring learning strategies and offering opportunities for expressive experiences with day-to-day situations

Requirements Design Prototyping Validation AVIRC development process

Cognitive Function Physical Environment Description Task Description Alertness Attention A house room with many decorative elements: clock, photos, pictures, calendar, background music Answer the date, time, turn on/off the radio and the lamp Game room contains books and games Solve different puzzles and choose books, guided by some clues Tasks Description

City sight

Supermarket

Ludoteca - Game room

Before create specific products, it is important to verify the technology acceptance by patients with different degree and kinds of disabilities

Experiment Objective We are interested in observing if the patients accept the VR technology and respond to virtual environment tasks in a meaningful way

Experiment was divided in three stages Contact with the computer PaintBrush Flat screen I-Glasses

ContextContext Patients with Schizophrenia Psychiatry Hospital Project

The patients 1 o paciente 2 o paciente 3 o paciente 4 o paciente Sex MMMF Age 37 years old 41 years old 46 years old 57 years old Age of the first crisis 29 years old 21 years old 28 years old 27 years old

Results - First Stage They loved to make draw and told that they want to use the computer in the next meeting High skills in manipulating the mouse

Results - Second stage They liked the experiment and the images; They hope to return to browse the city; They preferred to accomplish the tasks; They did not feel lost; They did not stress any difficulty in the use of the Virtual City

Results- Third Stage They liked to use the I-Glasses; They stressed no immersion problem

Psychiatric patients can accept Virtual Reality Technology and they feel very motivated to work with computers We considered that :

Conclusions The use of VR technology in cognitive rehabilitation of schizophrenia merits further research to determine functional relationships between the virtual environments and cognitive gains.