JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In neuropsychology, fully-immersive virtual reality has been spotlighted as a promising tool. It is considered that not only overcome the existing limitation of neuropsychological tests but also appropriate for treating executive functions within daily living tasks due to its high ecological validity. While fully-immersive virtual reality offers the new possibilities of neuropsychological tests, there are few studies that overview the intellectual landscape and academic trends about the research related to mainly targeted executive functions with fully-immersive virtual reality.

Objective:

The objective of this study is to outlook the research trends that use virtual reality in neuropsychological tests and to analyze the research trends using fully-immersive virtual reality neuropsychological tests with experimental articles.

Methods:

This review was carried out according to PRISMA guidelines. Articles were searched in three web databases using the keywords related to virtual reality, executive functions, and cognitive abilities. Studies conducted in two-step: keyword analysis and in-depth systematic review. In the web database searching from 2000 to 2019, 1167 articles were collected initially. 234 articles in the eligibility phase were used to conduct keyword analysis and a total of 47 articles were included for systematic review.

Results:

In keyword analysis, the number of research focused on dementia including the keyword ‘MCI’, ‘SCD’,’dementia' has been highlighted over the period rather than other symptoms. In addition, we identified the use of behavioral and physiological data in virtual environments was dramatically increased in recent researches. In the systematic review, we analyzed focusing on their purpose of study, assessment, treatment, and validation on usability and structure. The treatment studies and uncategorized studies including presence and cybersickness issues have emerged in the recent period. In addition, the target symptom and the range of participants were diversified.

Conclusions:

There has been a continuously increased interest in dealing with neuropsychology by using fully-immersive virtual reality. Target cognitive abilities have been diversified, as well as target symptoms. Moreover, the concept of embodied cognition was transplanted in this research area.