Cerebrum

A Virtual Reality App for Cognitive Rehabilitation designed for Mental Health Professionals

Cerebrum: how does it work?

Through a Virtual Reality headset, the patient can immerse themselves in experiential situations that emulate everyday reality (ecological approach). These scenarios are useful for addressing the user’s strengths and challenges.

This allows for the stimulation and exploration of effective solutions that can be easily generalized beyond the therapeutic-rehabilitation setting.

The Scenarios

The Modules

CEREBRUM – Virtual Cognitive Rehabilitation is divided into 5 Modules, one for each cognitive domain, containing over 110 exercises of varying levels of difficulty.

Memory and Learning

Cognitive Estimates

Metacognition and social interactions

Attention and Working Memory

Planning

The Tool

CEREBRUM – Virtual Cognitive Rehabilitation is an add-on tool, to the various therapeutic programs.

It focuses on cognitive stimulation aspects also addressing on metacognitive elements and psychosocial functioning (self-esteem, perceived self-efficacy, agency, empowerment, motivation, initiative).

1.

Cerebrum uses theintegrated approach method: the specific cognitive difficulty is not only compensated and/or repaired, but psycho-educated to its control and use in daily life.

2.

Cerebrum is a versatile, deficit-oriented rather than diagnosis-oriented tool. It allows the rehabilitation practitioner to have a customizable experiential tool for stimulation and therapy programs.

Diagnostic Categories:

Psychotic Spectrum Disorders

OCD

Mood Disorders

Borderline Disorder and Personality

Anxious Symptomatology

Dementia/MCI

The Research

Among the various research studies, an RCT (Randomized Controlled Trial) was conducted to analyze the feasibility in terms of acceptability and tolerability.

Secondary findings concerning the efficacy of the study:

» Safety of the intervention
» Patient satisfaction
» Cognitive functions
» Personal and social functioning

Documented case studies

Did not find any adverse effects

The experimental design

Participants: 39 subjects in the experimental group and 25 subjects in the control group, all with Bipolar Disorder, returned positive feedback.

Tolerability and acceptability:

Compared with paper methods, drop-out reduced to 20%20%

20%

They rated the experience as excellent or very good77%

77%

They did not experience any adverse effects (nausea, headache)87%

87%

The Results

Individuals in the experimental group showed an overall improvement in all cognitive, personal and social functions compared with the control group.

In particular, statistically significant> improvement was demonstrated in the four areas inherent in primary needs in bipolar disorder.