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In neuropsychology and clinical psychology, the efficacy of virtual reality (VR) experiences for knowledge acquisition and the potential for modifying conduct are well documented. Consequently, the scope of VR experiences for educational purposes has expanded in the health field in recent years. In this study, we sought to assess the effectiveness of ViveDe in a psychoeducational caregiver program. ViveDe is a VR application that presents users with possible daily life situations from the perspective of individuals with dementia. These situations can be experienced in immersive mode through 360° video. This research aimed to ascertain the associations between the sense of presence that can be achieved in VR and some users' psychological characteristics, such as distress and empathetic disposition. The study involved 36 informal caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer's disease. These participants were assessed using scales of anxiety and depression, perceived stress, empathy, and emotional regulation. They were asked to participate in a six-session psychoeducation program conducted online on dementia topics, in addition to experiencing the ViveDe application. The immersive VR sessions enabled the caregivers to directly experience the symptoms of dementia (e.g., spatial disorientation, agnosia, difficulty in problem-solving, and anomia) in everyday and social settings. The results indicated that although the experience in ViveDe (evaluated using the XRPS scale and five questions about emotional attunement) showed efficacy in producing a sense of first-person participation in the symptoms of dementia, further research is needed to confirm this. The structural equation model provided evidence that the characteristics of individuals who enjoy the VR experience play a determining role in the perceived sense of presence, which in turn affects the efficacy of the VR experience as a psychoeducational tool. Further research will be conducted to ascertain the potential role of these elements in conveying change in the caregivers of people with dementia. This will help us study the long-term effectiveness of a large-scale psychoeducation program in VR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Care for community‐dwelling people with dementia is frequently delegated to relatives, who find themselves in the role of informal caregivers with no practical management knowledge. This situation exposes caregivers to increased risk for emotional wellbeing. The current study aims to test whether the integration of the efficacy of an immersive virtual reality (VR) experience into an online psychoeducational program impacts caregiver empathy and therefore emotional wellbeing. Methods: One‐hundred informal caregivers of mild‐to‐moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients will be enrolled and randomly assigned to (i) an online psychoeducational program (control arm); or (ii) an online psychoeducational program integrated with VR (experimental arm). VR will consist of 360‐degree videos involving the caregivers to an immersive experience of dementia symptoms from the patient's perspective. Before, after the intervention and after 2 months, all participants will complete validated clinical scales for caregiver burden and anxiety (primary outcomes) and sense of competence and dispositional empathy (secondary outcomes). A subsample of 50 participants will also undergo MRI exam, including structural and functional (resting‐state and task‐functional MRI [fMRI]) sequences. The fMRI task paradigm will use emotional stimuli to evaluate the neural correlate of empathy, by stressing its cognitive and affective components. The main outcome will be the change in the clinical assessment; the secondary outcome will be the change in brain connectivity of networks subserving the empathic and emotional functioning. Results: We expect that the psychoeducational program will decrease anxiety and stress, enabling caregivers to perceive themselves capable of managing AD patients at home, educating them on symptom handling and boosting their cognitive empathy. In the experimental intervention, the VR‐based experience will act as an add‐on to psychoeducation, leading to greater improvement in the assessed clinical dimensions. VR should, in fact, enable a deeper understanding of disease symptoms and improve caregivers' cognitive empathy. We expect that the experimental intervention will result in deeper comprehension of disease symptoms and further strengthen caregivers' cognitive empathy. At the neural level, we expect to observe increased activation in circuits subserving cognitive empathy and decreased activation in circuits underlying affective empathy. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this will be the first randomized controlled trial assessing the effect of combining psychoeducational interventions with VR‐based experience in caregivers, and assessing both clinical and imaging outcomes. Trial Registration: Registered in ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05780476) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Clinical indications on how to approach caregiving with a person living with dementia underline the need "to have an empathic attitude" requiring the caregiver to view the world from the perspective of the person with dementia. However, it is not easy for the caregiver to understand the perspective their patients have on day-to-day experiences. To put the caregivers in the person with dementia's shoes, the Virtual Dementia Tour (VDT) was developed in 2001, and has been administered to millions of health professionals, community leaders, and family caregivers., Method: In this paper we present the Italian version of the VDT and discuss its internal validity and test-retest reliability for the pre-post experience survey defined by the VDT procedure., Results: An Italian sample (N = 419; mean age = 44.8; standard deviation 14.2) completed the tour and a 5-item survey provided before and after the experience revealed the disposition toward people with dementia changed., Discussion: The VDT Italian version wasrevealed to be valid in supporting a positive perspective change in the perception of dementia as is seen in the original VDT used in English-speaking countries., Highlights: Empathy predicts a higher quality of caregiving for the person living with dementia.The Virtual Dementia Tour (VDT) provides an experience from the person living with dementia's perspective and supports empathy.We present the first Italian version of VDT and its manual translation and validation.Italian VDT internal consistency and test-retest reliability were calculated.Results confirms the reliability and validity of the Italian VDT for empathy., Competing Interests: Author disclosures are available in the supporting information., (© 2022 The Authors. Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.)