Home Department: Psychology
Mentor: Hadi Hosseini (Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences)

“Virtual Reality Assessments for the Detection of Prodromal Alzheimer’s Disease”

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a common and debilitating form of dementia. Early detection of AD allows for earlier intervention and may even slow its progression. Current neuropsychological measures of AD are not effective in identifying AD in its early stages. The project Emma is working on will be one of the first to test the use of virtual reality (VR) as a tool to predict prodromal AD, comparing its efficacy to existing standard clinical assessments of AD. If successful, this study will provide a new approach to detect early memory problems in older adults using VR to assess navigation and visual spatial skills.