Wearable Tactile Display of Softness for Virtual Reality-Based Cognitive Rehabilitation

Serious games currently employed for virtual reality (VR)-based cognitive rehabilitation of aging-related Mild Cognitive Impairment rely only on visual and auditory stimuli. They exclude the sense of touch, despite its fundamental role in cognitive processes. To overcome this limitation, we are developing a compact, easy-to-use and low-cost haptic technology and a new strategy for VR-based cognitive rehabilitation at home in front of a computer screen. The new technology engages, for the first time, also the sense of touch. It consists of novel wearable tactile displays of softness that can generate tactile feedback on the user’s fingertips, while performing visuo-tactile tasks in VR. The system enables tactile interactions with virtual soft objects, whose properties can be controlled and tailored to the user. The integration of tactile perception and vision produces unprecedented immersive cognitive experiences, more natural. As a long-term expectation, this new approach might enable rehabilitation strategies never attempted before, not only more engaging (to increase therapeutic adherence), but also possibly more effective. Indeed, they might improve cognition, learning and brain reserve, owing to the stimulation of cognitive areas and functions affected by aging, like executive/attention function and tactile memory. This paper describes ongoing preliminary psychophysical tests, aimed at assessing the perceptual performance of this novel technology in healthy subjects.