Impact of Cognitive Priming on Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease which spreads increasingly, and subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is an early state of this disease. With the absence of efficient pharmacological treatment, non-pharmacological treatments may be the solution to slow down the progress of the disease. We propose a cognitive priming system in which we ask patients about several celebrity names and then we project the name of the forgotten ones. The projection is very fast (29 ms) in a way only the subconscious part of the patients' brain could intercept it. Two experiments with different SCD patients have been done. In the first one, the participants received cognitive priming projections, and in the second one, as a control group, they did not. Results show that the cognitive priming method works with SCD patients and that we can restore some missing memory using this technique. In addition, results show that the effect of the cognitive priming can last 1 month or more.

Virtual Reality Zoo Therapy for Alzheimer's Disease Using Real-Time Gesture Recognition.

Alzheimer's disease affects almost ten million people every year. Negative emotions such as frustration and anxiety can have impact on brain capability in terms of memory functions. Alzheimer's patients experience more negative emotions than healthy older adults. Non-pharmacological treatment such as animal therapy could help Alzheimer patient but has restrictions and requirements. We propose a Virtual Reality Zoo Therapy system in which the patients are immersed in a virtual environment and can interact with animals using their hands. With the immersive experience of virtual reality (VR), patients feel that they are in a real therapy room and can freely interact with animals. This system is controlled by an intelligent agent which tracks the patients' emotions using electroencephalography and commands the animals according to their hand gesture and emotions. Experiments have been done and preliminary results show that it is possible to predict patients' hand gesture and interpret them in order to interact with virtual animals and the Zoo Therapy system can reduce the negative emotions.