Cognitive assessment of OCD patients: Neuro VR vs neuropsychological test

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.