University of Southern California

Virtual Reality Cognitive Performance Assessment Test (VRCPAT)

The VRCPAT makes use of virtual environments to create a battery of neuropsychological measures to assess the ways in which the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors: attention-vigilance, effort, abstraction-flexibility, executive functioning, spatial organization, visual-motor processing, processing speed, visual memory, verbal abilities, and verbal memory and learning.

The U.S. Army is currently interested in developing state-of-the-art training methods that leverage the assets that are available with advanced information technology. One effort in this direction is the use of virtual reality simulation of relevant military challenges. By recycling virtual graphic assets built for the combat tactical simulation training game, Full Spectrum Warrior and other ICT assets, the project is able to build ecologically valid prototypes quickly and cost-effectively. The VRCPAT project brings together a team of researchers to incorporate cutting edge neuropsychological assessment into a state of the art interactive/adaptive virtual Iraqi city.

This project differs from others in the following ways:

  • Enhanced Ecological Validity: Different from traditional paper and pencil neuropsychological tests, VR allows individuals to attain a greater "sense of presence" as they become immersed within the computer-created environment. Thus, analogous to an aircraft simulator, virtual environments have the potential to provide interactive scenarios that can be useful in both assessing and re-training neurocognitive abilities
  • Enhanced Task Control and Response Measurement: VR-based neuropsychological assessment allows task stimuli and parameters (e.g., number, order, and speed) to be consistently manipulated and patient responses and behaviors to be closely monitored and automatically recorded.
  • Simultaneous Measurement of Multiple Cognitive Abilities: Can measure complex sets of skills and behaviors that may relate closely to real-world, functional abilities. This is different from standard instruments, in which components or isolated domains of cognitive function often are measured and clinicians combine data to predict real-world performance.

Tags: behavior, brain, environment, function, psychological, virtual

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Goals

  • Build the Virtual Iraq VRCPAT application (including various neurocognitive modules), with design input from military personnel
  • Establish the psychometric properties of the VRCPAT to ensure that it includes valid, reliable, and domain specific tasks of neurocognitive functioning
  • Use specific neuroimaging and psychophysiological technologies while persons are immersed in VRCPAT, in an attempt to understand how the activation of particular brain areas is related to given tasks
  • Uncover the relationship between the neural correlates of neurocognitive functioning in virtual environments for generalization to real world functioning
  • Use artificial neural networks for nonlinear stochastic approximation and to model specific neurocognitive processes of persons immersed in VRCPAT
  • Use parallel processing models to explain the function and dysfunction of the human brain
  • Integrate the VRCPAT with other Virtual Iraq modules (e.g. PTSD module) for the assessment, management, and rehabilitation of persons who have suffered trauma (TBI/PTSD)
  • Develop brain-computer interfaces (BCI), in which electroencephalogram (EEG) optimizes the interface between a human and a virtual reality (VR) simulation of relevant military challenges