快猫短视频

Dogs that moo, lawn mowers that sound like fax modems and red fluffy clouds in a clear blue sky are all components of a virtual reality (VR) game that could be used to explore the cognitive problems of people with schizophrenia.

At the in Long Beach, California, next week, computer scientist Daphna Weinshall of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel will describe a in which volunteers wearing a head-mounted display navigated through simulated streets, shopping malls and a market. They were asked to flag up 鈥渋ncoherencies鈥� such as objects that were the wrong colour or in the wrong position 鈥� a street sign at ground level, for instance 鈥� or making the wrong noise. While all the healthy volunteers spotted at least 87 per cent of the incoherencies, only six of the 43 volunteers with schizophrenia scored in this normal range.

As yet, the differences are not clear-cut enough for VR to replace established diagnostic methods, in which psychiatrists interview and observe patients to determine which of a checklist of symptoms they have. But the results suggest that VR simulations could be refined to produce diagnostic tests that provide a more detailed assessment of brain function, says Avi Peled, a psychiatrist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa who co-developed the simulation.

Peled is also interested in using VR to study the details of what goes wrong in the brains of people with schizophrenia. For example, while it is already possible to probe cognitive ability using pen-and-paper tests, in VR more information can be presented using several senses simultaneously. 鈥淲hy do we need this fancy technology? Because we can control vision and hearing in parallel,鈥� says Peled.

Peter Yellowlees, a psychiatrist at the University of California at Davis who developed a in the virtual world Second Life, suggests imaging patients鈥� brains while they play a VR game. That might reveal abnormalities in neural activity that underpin cognitive difficulties. 鈥淭hat is the winning combination,鈥� says Peled. 鈥淚t is surely the next step.鈥�

鈥淰R combined with brain imaging could reveal neural abnormalities鈥�

Simulations could also allow doctors to test for cognitive problems that may affect treatment. Matthew Kurtz of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, found that people with schizophrenia who were asked to take pills at a certain time in a VR apartment often took the wrong number at the wrong time (Schizophrenia Bulletin, ).

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