The goal of this project is the development of a comprehensive training SW and training plan in an ecologically valid environment of a virtual city, and the development of other games in virtual reality. The training is supposed to lead to an improvement in cognitive flexibility in the target group of OCD patients. Cognitive flexibility includes the ability to change one's behavior based on external conditions, to adapt, to relearn to a new relevant task, and to change the solution strategy of given tasks.
The virtual city and games consist of several complex tasks designed to train behavioral inhibition, navigation, attention, visuomotor coordination, and other executive functions. Patients can train these functions by swatting pesky flies in the kitchen, a trip to an amusement park with a shooting range, a trip to a hidden object castle, and the motion-active game "Beat Saber" (created by the Czech development studio Beat Games).
The project was launched with the financial support of the "PharmaBrain" grant No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_025/0007444 and the ongoing validation study is financed by the GAMA programme of the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TACR) within the Braintech project No. TP01010062. At the moment, the start of a randomized study of the project is underway, which is financed by the Czech Health Research Council (AZV CR) under the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic, project No. NU23-04-00402.
