A multi-sensory immersive room to provide well-being to elderly patients with dementia: a feasibility study.

A multi-sensory immersive room to provide well-being to elderly patients with dementia: a feasibility study.Klass M. Jacobs M. Ducommun Y. Hanset M. Ruscart L. Foucart J. Faculty for Motor Sciences (Université libre de Bruxelles) and Nursing home La Cambre. Elderly patients with psychological and behavioral symptoms related to neurocognitive disorders are regularly institutionalized in long-term care institutions. It has negative impact on mood and quality of life (increase confusion/disorientation, anxiety, depression, cognitive and physical decline, etc.) In addition, their symptoms are generally reduced by using drug interventions that may cause a sedative and inhibitory effect. Non-pharmacological interventions, as immersive virtual reality, may be a complementary treatment with less side effects and other cognitive and physical beneficial effects.One of the limits of immersive virtual reality remains the almost systematic use of VR headset, a constraint that is not necessarily accepted by people suffering from dementia and which can present certain inconveniences (heaviness of the headset, motion sickness, risk of collision and fall, etc.). The Autonomous Multisensorial System of InMersiv is a multi-sensory immersive room. The immersion is induced by videos projected on four walls, sounds corresponding to environment (i.e. landscape/place projected) and air flows mimicking the wind. The patient, accompanied if needed, is placed in the center of the room and can, by turning his head and/or moving around, see the different parts of the projected environment. By means of a joystick he can enlarge details and/or move into the environment. The immersive room is firstly dedicated to institutionalized elderly patients with or without neurocognitive disorders. The current aim of the immersive room is to increase patients’ well-being, create new stimulation sources and interaction opportunities, and reduce monotony and anxiety. The mid-term aim is to become a complementary non-drug intervention to reduce anxiety/agitation in patients with neurodegenerative disorders and a rehabilitation tool by integrating motion capture and interaction with the environments. A feasibility study was performed in a long-term care institution of Brussels on 19 patients (16 with neurocognitive disorders) who participated in 5 x 10 min sessions in the immersive room with different environments. Visual analogic scales were used to assess patients’ perception of well-being before, during and after the immersion, and perception of fear, safety and sensation of being enclosed during the immersion. Each session was filmed by two non-visible cameras. Videos were then analyzed using the Observed Emotion Rating Scale (OERS), an observational tool for rating pleasure, interest, sadness, anxiety and anger that the subject displays during immersion. The results showed that patients tolerated and like the immersion (interest and pleasure observed and almost no negative perceptions) and underline that the immersion induced a feeling of greater well-being during and after the sessions compared to before the sessions.