Virtual Reality Tools for Assessing Unilateral Spatial Neglect: A Novel Opportunity for Data Collection

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) affects 23-46% of stroke survivors, posing diagnostic challenges.
• Current USN assessment often requires specialized clinical staff.
• Virtual reality (VR) offers a novel platform for developing objective USN assessment tools.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and validate a VR tool for detecting and characterizing subtle USN symptoms.
• To evaluate the VR tool's efficacy in subjects with experimentally induced USN using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Main Methods:

• Developed a VR environment with a dynamic difficulty adjustment task to identify lateral asymmetries.
• Applied inhibitory TMS to the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and supramarginal gyrus (SMG), with sham TMS as a control.
• Measured subject performance using head yaw and visual axis metrics within the VR task.

Main Results:

• Significant differences in average head yaw were observed between STG and SMG stimulation groups.
• Marginally significant effects were found in the average visual axis.
• This study represents the first evaluation of artificially generated USN symptoms using a VR task.

Conclusions:

• VR technology, combined with TMS, can be used to study induced neurological deficits and inform the development of VR-based diagnostic tools for USN.
• The developed VR tool shows potential for objective and sensitive assessment of USN.
• Further research can leverage VR for studying acquired brain injuries and improving patient diagnostics.