Department of Neurology, Neuroscape and Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, UCSF-MC0444, 675 Nelson Rising Lane, San Francisco, CA, 94158, USA.
Departments of Physiology and Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 28;11(1):2552. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82109-3.
Therapeutic interventions have not yet been shown to demonstrate restorative effects for declining long-term memory (LTM) that affects many healthy older adults. We developed a virtual reality (VR) spatial wayfinding game (Labyrinth-VR) as a cognitive intervention with the hypothesis that it could improve detailed, high-fidelity LTM capability. Spatial navigation tasks have been used as a means to achieve environmental enrichment via exposure to and learning about novel and complex information. Engagement has been shown to enhance learning and has been linked to the vitality of the LTM system in the brain. In the current study, 48 older adults (mean age 68.7 ± 6.4 years) with average cognitive abilities for their age were randomly assigned to 12 h of computer game play over four weeks in either the Labyrinth-VR or placebo control game arms. Promptly before and after each participant's treatment regimen, high-fidelity LTM outcome measures were tested to assess mnemonic discrimination and other memory measures. The results showed a post-treatment gain in high-fidelity LTM capability for the Labyrinth-VR arm, relative to placebo, which reached the levels attained by younger adults in another experiment. This novel finding demonstrates generalization of benefits from the VR wayfinding game to important, and untrained, LTM capabilities. These cognitive results are discussed in the light of relevant research for hippocampal-dependent memory functions.
治疗干预措施尚未证明对影响许多健康老年人的衰退长期记忆 (LTM) 具有恢复作用。我们开发了虚拟现实 (VR) 空间寻路游戏 (Labyrinth-VR) 作为一种认知干预措施，假设它可以提高详细、高保真的 LTM 能力。空间导航任务已被用作通过暴露于新的和复杂的信息并学习来实现环境丰富的手段。参与已被证明可以增强学习，并且与大脑中 LTM 系统的活力有关。在目前的研究中，48 名年龄在 68.7±6.4 岁之间的认知能力处于平均水平的老年人被随机分配到 Labyrinth-VR 或安慰剂对照组中，在四周内每天玩 12 小时电脑游戏。在每个参与者的治疗方案之前和之后，都会立即测试高保真 LTM 结果测量，以评估记忆辨别和其他记忆测量。结果表明，与安慰剂相比，Labyrinth-VR 臂的高保真 LTM 能力在治疗后有所提高，达到了另一项实验中年轻成年人的水平。这一新发现表明，从 VR 寻路游戏中获得的益处可以推广到重要的、未经训练的 LTM 能力。这些认知结果将根据与海马依赖记忆功能相关的研究进行讨论。
