Ten-Scenarios of Tablet-Based Virtual Environment Game for Instrumental Activities of Daily Living in iRBD Patients

Abstract

The ability to perform instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) allows individuals to live independently. Several evaluation tools can be used to evaluate IADL. Although questionnaire-based evaluation tools are widely used, they have the issue of potentially being reported differently than the participants' actual abilities. Virtual reality-based IADL (VR-IADL) programs have been proposed for improved assistance and evaluation. However, previous VR-IADL programs had limited scenarios and were difficult to use. To overcome this, we developed a ten-scenario version of a tablet-based VR-IADL program. To test the performance of the tablet-based VR-IADL program, two studies were performed. In Study 1, we recruited 20 healthy adults to develop the VR-IADL scoring system, and in Study 2, 31 patients with idiopathic rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder were recruited to test its validity. Participants in Study 2 were considered to be at high risk of mild cognitive impairment, dementia, and Parkinson's disease. The results suggest that the VR-IADL score was positively correlated with cognitive tests and these correlations were better than those determined using existing tools. We believe that our tablet-based VR-IADL program is beneficial for older adults at high risk for neurodegenerative diseases.