Triggering Postural Movements With Virtual Reality Technology in Healthy Young and Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Validation Study for Early Dementia Screening

Open access
Date
2020-11-16Type
- Journal Article
Abstract
With the ultimate aim of early diagnosis of dementia, a new body balance assessment system with integrated head-mounted display-based virtual reality (VR) has been developed. We hypothesized that people would sway more in anterior-posterior (AP) direction when they were exposed to a VR environment where we intentionally provoked movements in forward and backward directions. A total of 14 healthy older adults (OA) (73.14±4.26 years) and 15 healthy young adults (YA) (24.93±1.49 years) were assessed for group differences in sway behavior. Body sway speed in 22 different conditions with and without VR environments was analyzed. Significant differences and large effect sizes were observed in AP sway under the VR environments (OA with P < 0.02; effect size> 0.61, YA with P < 0.003; effect size> 0.72) compared to the baseline condition without the VR environments. In addition, significant differences were found between the two groups in AP sway in all test conditions (P < 0.01). Our study shows that a VR environment can trigger body sway in an expected direction, which may indicate that it is possible to enhance the sensitivity of balance assessment by integrating immersive VR environments. The result of this study warrants a cross-sectional study in which OA diagnosed with and without dementia are compared on their sway behavior. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000451915Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Frontiers in MedicineVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
Frontiers MediaSubject
Posture; Virtual reality; Dementia; Early diagnosis; Aging; Postural sway; Balance assessment; Head-mounted display (HMD); Elderly; Older adults; Young adults; DementiaOrganisational unit
08758 - Trainingslehre / E. de Bruin
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