MindTheCity! - Sistema Poli

Cognitive rehabilitation with therapeutic video games.

Description

“MindTheCity!”: VR Application with over 10 years of R&D, a public-private mix. A research platform to provide VR exercises for stimulation, rehabilitation, and assessment of cognitive skills such as Attention, Memory, and Spatial Orientation. The scientific basis is formulated by the BIP Research Group – Brain Plasticity and behavior changes – of the Department of Psychology at UniTO, with which SynArea boasts a long collaboration with self-funded research and experimentation phases.
In version 1, patients from Molinette Hospital with acquired focal brain damage and mild neurocognitive disorder were involved, while version 2 allows access to biometric data during sessions with patients. With the ReHOME Project (POR FESR 2014/2020), it becomes a 3D video game dedicated to research, in order to train and improve players’ visuospatial skills, both in perspective navigation and first-person navigation, with different levels of difficulty and gamification based on the disability.

Project and Acronym: MindTheCity!
Innovation Cluster to contact: Polo ICT
Topics: Digital, Health

Acknowledgements received:

Over the years, the evolution of “MindTheCity!” and the results of the experimentation have allowed the Psychologists of the BIP Research Group to formulate articles and interventions in journals and sector meetings:

2016 – At the 13th Annual Conference of the Italian Association for Cognitive Sciences, a presentation showed that “fMRI results indicate a significant increase in post-training activation of the affected brain areas!”
2018 – In the specialized journal “Sistemi Intelligenti” published by Il Mulino – the publication titled: “Spatial Navigation Training in Virtual Reality Environments” highlighted that “the performance of participants in MindTheCity! improved during the course of the training”;
2018 – At the XVI National Congress of the Italian Society of Psychophysiology and Cognitive Neuroscience – Turin, November 15-17, 2018, the presentation titled “How Virtual Reality Can Counteract the Development of Cognitive Disorders: New Directions in Neuroscientific Research for Sustainable Welfare”;
April 2022 – The Neurosciences journal published an article by the BIP Research Group titled: “A Virtual Navigation Training Promotes the Remapping of Space in Allocentric Coordinates: Evidence From Behavioral and Neuroimaging Data”; (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.693968/full#F1). In this study, through a series of two different experiments, BIP researchers investigated the ability of the 3D video game “MindTheCity!” to train players’ visuospatial skills and, more specifically, their abilities in constructing allocentric spatial representations of first-person perspective navigation.

Why is it important?

“MindTheCity!” is the VR Application dedicated to Cognitive Rehabilitation and Spatial Memory, developed, tested, and improved through two regionally co-funded R&D Projects (RICCAmente and Mindset) and two “net” corporate investments: 2015-2016 and 2019-2022 (REHOME project).
The value of the project lies in:

the impact of the solution, which increases the degree of autonomy and consequently the quality of life of patients, and indirectly their families;
its inclusive potential and easy integration into the therapeutic path: it is a low-cost solution, easy to access and to use (playful aspects), requiring only an internet connection, and doctors can consult and monitor patients’ performance;
the collaboration between the BIP Research Group and SynArea, demonstrating the sharing of objectives between the scientific and entrepreneurial worlds, and resilience in mutual availability.

SynArea Consultants S.r.l.
daniele.zambon@synarea.com/ | www.synarea.com