Cornacchioli, J., Galambos, A., Rentouli, S., Canciello, R., Marongiu, R., Cabrera, D., & Njie, E.G. (2020). Virtual Reality Tremor Reduction in Parkinson's Disease. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202002.0452.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Cornacchioli, J., Daniel Cabrera and eMalick G. Njie. 2020 "Virtual Reality Tremor Reduction in Parkinson's Disease" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202002.0452.v1
Abstract
Multidisciplinary neurotechnology holds the promise of understanding and non-invasively treating neurodegenerative diseases. In this preclinical trial on Parkinson's disease (PD), we combined neuroscience together with the nascent field of medical virtual reality and generated several important observations. First, we established the Oculus Rift virtual reality system as a potent measurement device for parkinsonian involuntary hand tremors (IHT). Interestingly, we determined changes in rotation were the most sensitive marker of PD IHT. Secondly, we determined parkinsonian tremors can be abolished in VR with algorithms that remove tremors from patients' digital hands. We also found that PD patients were interested in and were readily able to use VR hardware and software. Together these data suggest PD patients can enter VR and be asymptotic of PD IHT. Importantly, VR is an open-medium where patients can perform actions, activities, and functions that positively impact their real lives - for instance, one can sign tax return documents in VR and have them printed on real paper or directly e-sign via internet to government tax agencies. Lastly, we generated a technical framework wherein movements in the real world can be measured side-by-side with those in virtual reality. With this framework, we observed anecdotal evidence of parkinsonian tremors being reduced in real life when our algorithms abolished digital hand tremors in VR.
Keywords
neurodegeneration; Parkinson's disease; essential tremor; Deep Brain stimulation; Levodopa; Virtual Reality; Oculus Rift; Medical Virtual Reality; Tremor stabilization; Equalizers
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Neuroscience and Neurology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received:
1 May 2022
Commenter:
Mary Rotondi
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment:
I am very interested in your article and wonder if you are doing any research on virtual reality for essential tremor. I have essential tremor and am looking for non-drug treatments of my disease. Virtual reality appears to be an interesting way to affect the neuroplasticity of the brain. Let me know if you need volunteers for future studies.
Commenter: Mary Rotondi
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.