Who would ever think that a hugely popular virtual reality adventure
video game Duke Nukem could provide crucial clues not only in diagnosing
depression, but also in determining the severity of such illness?
Instead of the usual series of probing questions about dreams and
relationship with your family, relatives or friends, you are sent forth
to fight against marauding aliens in a virtual environment.
What attracted the interest of the U.S. National Institute of Mental
Health (NIMH) team of experts is the navigational tasks involve in the
game more than its martial elements. Based on different studies about
depression, the condition could be linked to shrinkage or dysfunction of
the hippocampus, the part of the brain in charged with memory and
spatial awareness.
With the use of a virtual town lifted from Duke Nukem scenes, volunteers
are instructed to navigate their way to various landmarks around that
town for a period of time. With the exception of the weaponry and the
aliens, the NIMH team led by Leda Gould, have been able to asses spatial
awareness and memory.
A distinct impairment of these mental functions was exhibited by those
volunteers who are suffering from depression. This provided provided
Gould and her team with a yardstick against which to measure the
severity of their depression, with the most chronically depressed
volunteers posting the worst results in the trial.
“Neuropsychological testing has long established the presence of memory
deficits in patients with unipolar depression, and, more recently, in
those suffering from bipolar depression,” wrote Gould in her article in
the American Journal of Psychiatry.
“Traditionally tasks assessing spatial memory require individuals to remember the position of items in an array.
“Because of their multi-faceted nature, navigational tasks based on
virtual reality may provide a more consistent, sensitive measure of
spatial ability and are more likely to require hippocampal involvement,
thereby increasing their sensitivity to the impact of depression on this
cognitive domain.”
Other physical illnesses such as diabetes can be diagnosed and assessed
with a simple test. However, there is no method yet to quantify the
severity of a mental health condition like depression.
“Depression is extremely complex,” explains London-based psychoanalyst
Jean Allen, “And can be very hard to diagnose and evaluate.
“It manifests itself in a variety of different ways for a variety of
different people. At one end of the scale you have got those who suffer
only mildly and whose lives aren’t too badly affected; at the other you
have chronic clinical depression that, at its worst, can tip into
full-scale psychosis.
“Measuring exactly where someone is on that continuum, or indeed if they are on it at all, is very hard.”
Although The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have
laid out categories of mental disorder, and various criteria for
diagnosing and assessing those disorders, as well as numerous depression
rating scales have been developed to quantify and measure the severity
of mental illness, all these remain as imprecise science. They
basically rely on a gradual piecing together of information through
question and answer, rather than any clear cut, one-off diagnostic test.
“There are a variety of questionnaires you can use to help assess
someone’s mental health condition,” says Jean Allen, “But from a
psychoanalyst’s point of view they are not really very accurate.”
This is where the virtual reality navigation test comes in to fill such
gap. While the study does not provide a clear-cut technique for actually
diagnosing depression, it definitely offers the possibility of a new
and more accurate yardstick for measuring the level of depression.
Sunday 26 March 2017
Virtual Reality Techniques To Aid Depression
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About Unknown
Nathan is an online researcher and a prolific writer of articles that focus on technology, places and people. Nathan has worked in different industries such as the information technology industry, the travel and tourism industry and the retail industry. He has worked in several projects for blue-chip companies, that are part of the IT, travel and tourism and retail industries. His work and his passion for traveling has made him journey throughout the world. He has led large work-teams to accomplish business goals successfully. His rich experience undoubtedly helps him to write extensively.
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