The distortion of reality perception in schizophrenia patients, as measured in Virtual Reality.
BACKGROUND
Virtual Reality is an interactive three-dimensional computer generated environment. Providing a complex and multi-modal environment, VR can be particularly useful for the study of complex cognitive functions and brain disorders. Here we used a VR world to measure the distortion in reality perception in schizophrenia patients.


METHODS
43 schizophrenia patients and 29 healthy controls navigated in a VR environment and were asked to detect incoherencies, such as a cat barking or a tree with red leaves.


RESULTS
Whereas the healthy participants reliably detected incoherencies in the virtual experience, 88% of the patients failed in this task. The patients group had specific difficulty in the detection of audio-visual incoherencies; this was significantly correlated with the hallucinations score of the PANSS.


CONCLUSIONS
By measuring the distortion in reality perception in schizophrenia patients, we demonstrated that Virtual Reality can serve as a powerful experimental tool to study complex cognitive processes.
Sorkin
Anna
A
Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Weinshall
Daphna
D
Peled
Avi
A
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D007557:Israel; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D014584:User-Computer Interface