The fight against Alzheimer's disease is one of the great challenges of our century. More than 47.5
million people suffer from dementia in the world and Alzheimer's accounts for 70% of these diseases.
It is estimated that a new case of Alzheimer's is diagnosed every minute in the world and in 2050 this
figure will have tripled.
However, humankind refuses to give up. For this reason, hundreds of foundations and associations
have opened their doors to try to fight this disease. One of the most outstanding foundations in this
area is the Pasqual Maragall Foundation. This Foundation is currently working on a program for the
prevention of Alzheimer's disease at the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Centre (BBRC).
Dr. Stavros Skouras is part of the prevention program that is carried out at the Pasqual Maragall
Foundation and has contacted the authors of this report to help in the project, due to the agreement
between the Foundation and the UPC. Dr. Stavros requests for the development of a virtual reality
application in order to use it in one of the studies that belong to the program.
The study consists of the use of two innovative techniques, neurofeedback (NF) combined with real
time functional magnetic resonance imaging (rt-fMRI), and virtual reality (VR). The patient is
introduced into a magnetic resonance scanner with virtual reality devices, through which he interacts
with the virtual environment designed. Then, from the aforementioned technique, a series of images
of the brain of the patient are captured, and these are processed by Matlab, which determines the
degree of brain activity development in the hippocampus by means of a single variable. The developed
application must be able to treat this variable created by Matlab and translate it into the form of a
change within the virtual environment, and thus close the feedback loop. The objective of this study is
to obtain neuromarkers, based on the implementation of this technique. These neuromarkers will be
studied, using advanced methods, in order to establish a relationship between the development of this
marker and the risk that the patient will suffer from the disease.
Therefore, the objective of the project is to develop a virtual reality application, through Unity
platform, capable of being used in this complex experimental clinical study and that meets with the
requirements that Dr. Stavros will be marking during the course of the project.
