Dec 2020
More than 90% of people with dementia develop behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. First-line care strategies in dementia care should consider a combination of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions. The present single-case research study aimed to evaluate the use of virtual reality in the context of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia, quality of life, and medication use among people with dementia. Ten persons with dementia used virtual reality for a mean of twice per week for eight weeks. In each virtual reality session, lasting for a maximum of 30 minutes, the persons with dementia chose one to three short films from 11 different films: a hen run, a farm with animals, two cafés, an old-fashioned grocery shop, a local river, a square in the local city, a museum, a castle, a fishing boat and an Austrian mountain scenery. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected pre-, during, and post-intervention. No major differences in the quantitative data in terms of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia, quality of life, or medication use were observed. However, the qualitative data showed that the use of virtual reality provided the persons with dementia with short-term enjoyment, heightened energy and alertness, and an experience of reminiscence. The use of virtual reality may therefore serve as a complementary tool to the existing non-pharmacological management techniques of people with dementia in nursing homes.
Dec 2022 DOI 10.14302/issn.2766-8681.jcsr-22-4400
Tactile information plays an important role in human manipulation of objects; however, prosthetic limb placement or teleoperation requires the manipulation of alternative bodies in the absence of tactile sensations. To provide an alternative to tactile sensation, this study proposes and assesses a continuous feedback scheme with temporally coded vibration. This scheme was designed to provide discrete intended tactile information in response to changing object-controlled situations by repetitively presenting time-coded vibration patterns. The effects of the proposed scheme on an object with acatch-and-hold task in virtual reality were confirmed. Compared to the control feedback scheme that provides vibration only when the balance of the virtual grip force and object position is changed, the proposed feedback scheme has a better effect in terms of the success rate of holding on to the object with an appropriate holding force during the task. The effect is larger, especially in the invisible task condition, suggesting that the increased amount of information with coded vibration patterns can be used without any special training, especially without visual information. Considering the existing studies that show the effect of a feedback scheme in response to motion events, the continuous feedback scheme proposed in this study may be more suitable for movements that require sequential coordination and passive responses than stimulation methods based on motion events. This feedback scheme has potential applications not only in tele-technology but also in healthcare, such as rehabilitation.