title: Cognitive Assessment of OCD Patients: NeuroVR vs Neuropsychological Test.
abstract: This study aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Neuro-Virtual Reality as tool for the neuropsychological assessment in OCD patients. We used the neuropsychological battery and a virtual version of the Multiple Errand Test (V-MET), developed using the NeuroVR software, in order to evaluate the executive functions, the ability to plan ahead on complex problem solving tasks in daily life in 30 obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients and 30 healthy controls. The results showed the presence of difficulties of OCD patients: lower levels of divided attention and higher levels of errors; higher mean rank of inefficiencies, interpretation failures and rule breaks and longer time of execution of the whole task. By contrast, controls have higher level of efficiency and better performance. In addition, a significant correlation was found between the V-MET and the neuropsychological battery which confirms and supports the ecological validity of neurocognitive assessment through NeuroVirtual Reality.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Filippo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: La Paglia
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Caterina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: La Cascia
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Rosalinda
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rizzo
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Flavia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cangialosi
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Margherita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sanna
authors.affiliation: Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Riva
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Biomedicine and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Palermo, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: La Barbera
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D000073216:Mental Status and Dementia Tests; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D000076142:Virtual Reality