JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The counterclockwise study carried out in the late 1970s placed a number of older men in a house for 5 says where everything was based on the 1950s: decoration, clothing, magazines, tv and radio. They discussed 1950s events as if these were current. By the end of the period, participants showed marked improvement in cognitive and physical abilities. This provided an extreme example of ‘reminiscence therapy’, although the latter is typically restricted to looking at hold photographs, visiting childhood places, and carrying out activities from a younger age.

Objective:

The objective of our study was to examine whether it might be possible to obtain improvements in cognitive and physical functioning with two short immersions in a virtual reality (VR) scenario, reproducing various aspects of the counterclockwise study, with the critical enhancement that participants saw themselves as having a virtual body that looked like their younger self.

Methods:

We carried out a between groups study with 23 participants aged between 65 and 85. In the Young Self (n=11) condition participants were embodied in a virtual body that looked like themselves from the 1960s, in a living room decorated from that time, and on the black and white tv there was a program showing the 1968 Eurovision song contest (that Spain won). Then they were transported to be in the audience of a virtual simulation of the concert. In the Current Self condition (n = 12) the procedures were the same, but participants were embodied in their current body, in a modern living room and transported to a performance by the same singer as she is today, singing the same song.

Results:

An hierarchical Bayesian analysis revealed that one week after the final VR exposure, those in the Young Self condition: demonstrated lower subjective age than those in the Current Self condition (probability = 0.954). They had higher awareness of positive age-related change (probability = 0.891), and a higher score on the WHO wellbeing scale (0.844). Moreover, with respect to performance variables: they took less time to trace a trail (1.000), made less mistakes in doing so (0.802), had greater right hand (0.849) and left hand (0.996) grip strength. However, three weeks after their final VR exposure these differences diminished apart from positive awareness of age-related change (0.819), trail making mistakes (0.835), and left hand grip strength (0.996).

Conclusions:

The results demonstrate that even two short exposures in VR, where people were embodied in their younger body and immersed in an iconic event from nearly 60 years earlier, still resulted in improvement of some age-related responses. This is encouraging for further research with more extensive VR experiences over a longer time period.