Virtual Environments to Assess Facility Design for the Cognitively Impaired

Sep 18, 2014

The researchers developed an immersive virtual reality system to assess the behavioral and physiological conditions of subjects while interacting with a realistic virtual environment, assisting clinicians in cognitive evaluation and architectural designers in designing for cognitive difficulties.

Their model is versatile – allowing an experimenter to easily place visual and auditory objects in the virtual environment, set experimental parameters, define basic interactions, while collecting information about the experiment and subject. This allows their system to be used (1) by clinicians working on dementia, looking for environmental biomarkers related to disease progression, and (2) by architectural designers to better inform the design of assisted care facilities and hospitals.

Author:

Cory Stevenson (University of California, San Diego)

Scott Runyon (University of California, San Diego)

Jurgen Schulze, Ph.D. (University of California, San Diego)

Gert Cauwenberghs, Ph.D. (University of California, San Diego)

Michael Rafii, MD, Ph.D. (University of California, San Diego)

Eduardo Macagno, Ph.D. (University of California, San Diego)

Presented at:

2014 ANFA Conference (Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA)

Published & professionally reviewed by:

Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture

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