Active navigation and immersive technologies can strengthen memory and treat neurodegenerative diseases, study finds

Much like a time machine, episodic memory allows us to travel to the past in our minds and relive personal experiences with complete clarity, as if we were reliving them. It could be anything from remembering where we left the car keys last night to the last time we saw a relative we hadn’t seen in years. This ability to record everyday experiences begins to deteriorate very early in people with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

A team of researchers from the UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) carried out a study on the performance of episodic memory in a specific environment and its relationship with locomotion, body movement and environmental characteristics in an environment equipped with new immersive technologies, in order to establish how memories of lived experiences are created.

“The study focuses on how episodic memory works, specifically how the spatial environment affects the way and effectiveness with which memories are organized in our minds,” said Álvaro Pastor, architect, scientist cognitive, researcher at the XR-Lab and Learning at the UOC. Media and Entertainment Research Group (GAME), and one of the main authors of the study with Pierre Bourdin-Kreitz, member of the teaching and research staff of the Faculty of Computing, Multimedia and Telecommunications of the UOC and coordinator of the XR-Laboratory in the same university.

The study, published in Scientific reportsseeks to establish whether active navigation (when a person moves in a given environment) has an impact on the functioning of episodic memory and to study how the physical characteristics of one’s spatial environment can modulate the organization of episodic memory.

The authors carried out a series of tests using immersive technologies at the CaixaForum museum in Barcelona. An analysis of the data suggests that these technologies have potential applications in the design of non-invasive treatments and therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.

The researchers point out that the relationship between space and episodic memory has been the subject of scientific research for decades. In fact, the method of loci or mind palace, one of the oldest and most reliable mnemonic rules, is based on the creation of a mental building and the association of elements of information with specific places therein.

Creating a cognitive map

During the study, the 28 participants moved around the two floors of the museum, connected by a staircase, either passively using virtual reality or actively using augmented reality. During their visit, they were shown a number of images at specific locations on each floor.

Next, the authors tested what each participant could remember immediately after the visit and 48 hours later. According to the authors, “the results suggest that participants who walked the route remembered more information in both tests.”

Additionally, when looking at the location of the most memorable images, the authors found that participants remembered more information from where they changed floors: the stairs.

“Information learned next to the museum stairs was more memorable than that encountered in the middle or end of the tour, even though it was near colorful works of art,” the authors said.

After analyzing the data and the subjects’ responses, the authors noted that active learning experiences can lead to better episodic memory performance than passive encoding.

“Actively navigating an environment allows us to collect enough information for our episodic systems to construct a sort of cognitive map of our experience, leading to more effective later recall,” Pastor said.

Additionally, the physical elements involved in active navigation, whether aiding or hindering it, appear more strongly integrated into our memory of the experience. In fact, data shows that information and experiences gained in physical parts of the museum, such as the stairs, are remembered better than stimuli from other locations.

“This peculiarity suggests that when recording experience, our cognitive map places particular emphasis on the most salient aspects of spatial navigation and creates associations between them and information learned in physical proximity to them,” said the UOC researcher.

Use of artificial intelligence

The study also examined the type of image displayed during the museum visit that participants were expected to remember. These images were frontal portraits of artificial human faces specially generated for this study using neural network-based AI.

“By creating artificial faces, we were able to provide participants with images they had never seen before and ensure that their features were uniform, including their facial expression and lighting,” said Pastor, who also noted that the high-sensitivity cognitive tasks involved in episodic memory include memorizing a person’s face after their first encounter and contextual details of the encounter, as well as its time and place.

Memory Improvement Apps

As for the practical applications of the study, the research led to the development of a new and robust method involving the use of immersive technologies to better assess episodic memory in natural conditions close to real-world conditions. This means that scientifically proven information is available to help design therapies involving active exploration through enriched spatial environments.

“In the case of healthy individuals, using the results of this study in active learning experiences with immersive applications may help maximize retention of information at specific locations in a course,” said Bourdin-Kreitz.

However, the benefits of active learning don’t stop at instructional design. “Taking part in active learning experiences that involve a person’s whole body instead of learning passively could be a preventative measure to help healthy people retain their episodic memory skills longer,” said Pastor.

“Just like with the loci or mind palace method, the idea of ​​walking while learning to increase retention may have been known to humanity since ancient times, at least if history is to be believed that Aristotle taught philosophy to his students by walking the streets of Athens, and thanks to immersive technologies, we can now study this phenomenon in depth,” Bourdin-Kreitz said.

As for clinical applications, virtual and augmented reality technologies can be used to help design rehabilitation programs tailored to each patient.

“Clinical interventions based on such technologies could slow disease progression in an inexpensive and easily scalable manner and, as they are non-invasive, could help increase patient compliance without compromising safety,” the authors concluded. , after pointing out that they continue to work on new research to, for example, add odors in a controlled manner while simultaneously showing subjects virtual images on a virtual reality headset.