Cognitive Training using Immersive Virtual Reality

Normal adult becomes memory decline when increasing age. Memory decline can change from normal aging to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and then Alzheimer's disease dementia. In order to reduce the risk of dementia, the cognitive training or brain training is needed. Cognitive training can stimulate the ability of normal person's memory for keeping ability of memory prompt when increasing age. Virtual Reality (VR) technology can be used to establish VR application for cognitive training. This paper proposes VR application for cognitive training that uses a head-mounted display for a full immersive device with VR controllers. This VR application is designed for training in visual memory and visuospatial under the psychiatrist's guidance. There were 45 participants in this experiment. All participants were tested memory ability of remember things and places from first practicing and evaluated satisfaction after using our VR application from satisfactory form. This experiment can help to determine the difficulty level in the next training and suitability of activity. The time duration of recall memory related to difficulty level in VR application (correlation coefficient, p = 0379, 0.010). Furthermore, the satisfied evaluation of participants using VR application was "satisfied" and "very satisfied" in each difficulty level in VR application that Cronbach's alpha = 0.743.