Cognitive Assessments in Virtual Reality

Standard cognitive assessments are normally administered over pen-and-paper or desktop computers. Although these tests are accessible, they are often administered by a trained professional to ensure protocol adherence, and shorter tasks are often repeated many times to mitigate the impact of anomalous trials. These considerations render the current practices costly and time-consuming. For this proposal, we will explore the use of virtual reality (VR) for cognitive assessments. Having complete control over a virtual environment will allow us to isolate the subject from distractions and deliver engaging stimuli that yield responses with greater dynamic range. Modern VR headsets also include physiological sensors that capture measures correlated with cognitive load, which will bear greater insight into how the subject feels as they complete a task. During the scope of this project, we intend on translating an existing tablet-based assessment to VR, deploying it to both healthy and clinically relevant cohorts, and then analyzing the sensor data to uncover potential biomarkers of cognition.

Faculty Supervisor:

Alexander Mariakakis

Student:

Partner:

Lviv Polytechnic National University

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Information and Communications Technology; Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Technology

University:

University of Toronto

Program: