TY - JOUR
T1 - Development of a Virtual Floor Maze Test - Effects of Distal Visual Cues and Correlations with Executive Function in Healthy Adults
AU - Martelli, Dario
AU - Prado, Antonio
AU - Xia, Boxi
AU - Verghese, Joe
AU - Agrawal, Sunil K.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received April 14, 2019; revised July 12, 2019 and August 14, 2019; accepted August 21, 2019. Date of publication August 28, 2019; date of current version October 8, 2019. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant NSF IIS-1339666, in part by the New York State Department of Health under NYS Translational Grant C31290GG, NYS Institutional Support C32238GG, NYS Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship C32632GG to DM, and in part by the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology [Doctoral Fellowship to AP] which had no role in design, execution, analysis, or writing of this study. (Corresponding author: Sunil K. Agrawal.) D. Martelli was with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 USA. He is now with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 USA.
PY - 2019/10
Y1 - 2019/10
N2 - Virtual reality (VR) is a useful tool to assess and improve spatial navigation, a complex skill and relevant marker for progression of dementia. A fully-immersive VR system that allows the user to physically navigate in the space can provide an ecologically valid environment for early detection and remediation of cognitive and navigational deficits. The aim of this study was to develop a virtual version of the floor maze test (VR-FMT), a navigational test that requires navigating through an unfamiliar two-dimensional floor maze. With the VR-FMT, mazes of desired complexity and walls of preferred height can be built to challenge navigational ability and mask visual clues. Fifty-five healthy adults completed the FMT in three different conditions: real environment (RE), virtual environment with no walls (VE-NW), and virtual environment with walls (VE-W). In addition, they completed two neuropsychological tests, the Trail Making Test and Digit Symbol Substitution Test. Results showed that the time to complete the maze in the VE was significantly higher than in the RE. The introduction of walls increased the number of errors, the completion time, and the length of the path. Only time to exit in the VE-W correlated with results of the cognitive tests. Participants were further subdivided on the basis of their time to exit the maze in the RE, VE-NW, and VE-W (low navigational time - LNT, and high navigational time - HNT). Only when analyzing the time to exit the maze in the VE-W, the LNT group outperformed the HNT group in all cognitive tests.
AB - Virtual reality (VR) is a useful tool to assess and improve spatial navigation, a complex skill and relevant marker for progression of dementia. A fully-immersive VR system that allows the user to physically navigate in the space can provide an ecologically valid environment for early detection and remediation of cognitive and navigational deficits. The aim of this study was to develop a virtual version of the floor maze test (VR-FMT), a navigational test that requires navigating through an unfamiliar two-dimensional floor maze. With the VR-FMT, mazes of desired complexity and walls of preferred height can be built to challenge navigational ability and mask visual clues. Fifty-five healthy adults completed the FMT in three different conditions: real environment (RE), virtual environment with no walls (VE-NW), and virtual environment with walls (VE-W). In addition, they completed two neuropsychological tests, the Trail Making Test and Digit Symbol Substitution Test. Results showed that the time to complete the maze in the VE was significantly higher than in the RE. The introduction of walls increased the number of errors, the completion time, and the length of the path. Only time to exit in the VE-W correlated with results of the cognitive tests. Participants were further subdivided on the basis of their time to exit the maze in the RE, VE-NW, and VE-W (low navigational time - LNT, and high navigational time - HNT). Only when analyzing the time to exit the maze in the VE-W, the LNT group outperformed the HNT group in all cognitive tests.
KW - Cognition
KW - floor maze test
KW - gait
KW - navigation
KW - virtual reality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85073665996&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85073665996&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TNSRE.2019.2938103
DO - 10.1109/TNSRE.2019.2938103
M3 - Article
C2 - 31478863
AN - SCOPUS:85073665996
VL - 27
SP - 2229
EP - 2236
JO - IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
JF - IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
SN - 1534-4320
IS - 10
M1 - 8818375
ER -