Intervene in Alzheimer's disease, he used the "deception" in the metaverse

To fight Alzheimer's, VR is going to trick the patient's brain...

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Author | Dong Zibo

Edit | Lin Juemin

Can you imagine the day you developEdzheimer's?

As your memory fades, you begin to be unable to distinguish the faces of your loved ones and friends, and your memories begin to blur. You may not be able to speak, read, or take care of yourself in your life.

Alzheimer's disease, also known as Alzheimer's disease, is more common in people over the age of 70. Because the cause of its disease is not yet clear, and there is no clear treatment method, it has become another "terminal disease" in the hearts of the elderly.

According to the results of the seventh national census, in 2020, the proportion of the elderly population aged 65 and above in the mainland has exceeded 13.5%; in 2021, it can exceed 14%, which is an important node for a country to enter the aging society. According to the data of the "China Alzheimer's Disease Report 2021" released by Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, the number of existing Cases of Alzheimer's disease and other dementia in China in 2019 was 13.24 million, and the prevalence and mortality rate were slightly higher than the global level.

As aging deepens, Alzheimer's disease has become an increasingly interesting topic.

But Cao Lu, CTO of Hangzhou Virtual Reality Technology, believes that this disease, which is difficult to defeat in the real world, may use VR to obtain a first-line cure in the metaverse.

And to fight Alzheimer's disease, it may depend on the "deception" of the metaverse.

1

Silicon Valley startups return

The first time I met Cao Lu, he was late in coming, taking off his down jacket in the cold winter in Beijing, leaving only a short sleeve. He has thick hair, fashionable clothes, and frank conversation, which is not the same as the stereotype of technical people in the minds of ordinary people.

Cao Lu has spent most of her life in the United States so far, and has crossed the ocean before graduating from junior high school. Today he is a Ph.D. student at Santa Clara University in the United States, majoring in cybersecurity, but according to himself, he is in a "semi-suspended state".

Santa Clara University is located in the heart of Silicon Valley, ranked high in the Western United States, and because of its proximity to the water, most of its graduates are favored by Silicon Valley manufacturers. Looking at this alone, it is a bit like China's Beiyu.

Many of Cao Lu's friends have joined the big factory after graduation, but he is reluctant to work so simply: "In the big factory in Silicon Valley, you will be very comfortable, eat, shop, and even cut your hair without leaving the company." In this way, I fear that my fighting spirit will be flattened. "

Of course, this is only one factor, he also saw that in Silicon Valley, there is still an invisible ceiling for Chinese employment. In the long run, it can only be a frog in warm water.

At the age of 24, Cao Lu chose to start a business.

Cao Lu's entrepreneurial story is not as "hard" as other people's, the family is engaged in real estate business, and Cao Lu's entrepreneurial life is actually more favorable. Starting her own business in Silicon Valley, Cao planned an event information distribution platform for university clubs and raised $500,000 in an Indian VC, but eventually ran out of budget early because of disagreements with outsourcing companies.

After returning to China and experiencing several unseen entrepreneurial projects, Cao Lu finally chose to join the company.

Looking back on her entrepreneurial experience, Cao Lu knows that she was never forced to go to the brink of extinction. It is precisely because they always have a way to retreat, they can always take office; they always have the option to give up when they encounter lows, and they do not have the courage to fight a battle to withstand the harsh winter.

At that time, Cao Lu joined a unicorn company engaged in AI medical treatment - speculative technology, as an architect responsible for international research and development, in the United States, Germany and Japan in the middle of the "flying around"; at that time, VR is still a new concept that has been given high hopes, the circle is discussing vr may bring breakthroughs in interaction and use, perhaps some people can imagine the bursting of the bubble in 2017 and 18, but most people do not want to believe it.

A few years later, after imagining that technology hit the ceiling, Cao Lu began to look for new opportunities. At this time, he remembered Kang Cheng, who had been in contact with him before. Kang Cheng also started a business in Silicon Valley and was familiar with Cao Lu in the circle, but what Cao Lu valued most was that Kang Cheng had a trait that he did not have - "stable": he rarely got angry, and rarely appeared too excited, and he was a moody type.

Cao Lu admired his temperament, stable, down-to-earth, and able to withstand the wind and waves, which made Cao Lu make up his mind to cooperate with Kang Cheng.

So Cao Lu also threw herself into the VR industry and went to Virtual Reality Technology as CTO.

2

Intervene in Alzheimer's disease and use VR to trick the brain

In 2020, VR is the trough of the trough. Lei Feng had previously communicated with an executive of a listed VR content company, and he used a phrase to describe the VR industry: "Seeing him rise to a tall building, seeing him entertain guests, seeing him collapse." "

Some people say that the VR industry veterans who can persist to today have a "big heart". There are many "dead elements" in Leifeng's circle of friends who are still moving forward on the VR track, although they do not know where the future flashpoint is, but they invariably believe that the VR industry is holding a "big move".

In the previous article, Leifeng network has systematically elaborated on the various problems encountered by the VR industry, one of the core difficulties is that the VR industry cannot find the real core value and role of VR.

Why should consumers use VR? This is also a problem that Cao Lu often thinks about after entering the VR industry. In fact, the company does not lack projects, but it lacks good projects with commercial value and caters to real market demand.

Cao Lu told Leifeng that he had seen too many "outrageous" projects. The owner of a cemetery once found the virtual reality and asked them to customize a VR project for the cemetery - virtual grave sweeping, in which users can enter the cemetery and see their deceased family members and interact with them.

Even if it is said to be a "project of Hades", it is not an exaggeration.

In addition, Virtual Reality has also received a project called "Dual Teacher Classroom": students wear VR glasses and receive online courses from "famous teachers", and teachers in the physical world are used as assistants to help students receive knowledge. In this system, students can ask real-time questions to famous teachers through the system, and form a network of communication online, so that students can get real-time answers.

The idea sounds good, and the company puts a lot of effort into it, but it falls on the simplest problem - wearing VR glasses, how to take notes?

After looking at a large number of projects, Cao Lu found that vr projects cannot be viewed with positive thinking. In other words, you can't blindly start a project just because VR can do this function.

"We don't do projects and features that we can do without VR; we only do projects that only VR can achieve."

Taking this as a guideline, Cao Lu and the team carefully screened the projects. They are closely linked to academic research, and in the deep collision between VR and brain science, Virtual Reality Technology sees the possibility of VR intervention in Alzheimer's disease.

As mentioned earlier, Alzheimer's disease has a large number of people in China, and this population will continue to expand as it ages – the need to intervene in Alzheimer's disease is real.

Why use VR? Cao Lu told Lei Feng that this also depends on the essence of VR - deceiving the brain: "It's like riding a roller coaster in VR, many people will still feel fear even if they know that they are not on the roller coaster." If you can 'trick' the brain through this scenario, it can actually have an unexpected therapeutic effect. "

Fundamentally, Alzheimer's is a cognitive disorder. Helping patients re-establish the bridge between cognition and reality is the key to intervention in Alzheimer's disease.

At present, the pathological understanding of Alzheimer's disease is still in its infancy, from clearing protein deposits in the brain to improving the level of neurotransmitters, scientists have proposed many solutions, but they have not been able to find a clinically determined effective solution. Drug therapy can only delay the onset of the disease, and cannot restore the patient to the "original state" of life.

At the same time, drugs led by adjunasumab and donepezil are often accompanied by side effects, and in severe cases, they can even cause cerebral edema, which has a considerable impact on the quality of life and health of patients.

The solution given by Cao Lu and the team is different - he wants to help patients rebuild their understanding of reality through VR's "deception" of the brain and behavioral training.

Cao Lu is already a father of two children, when the children are still young, Cao Lu often observes the way they feel the world: "Children gradually collect information to understand the world by listening, seeing, touching, and their feelings about this world are not innate, but acquired through feelings and training, learning and formation." "

Alzheimer's patients, on the other hand, are actually in a similar situation to children: their cognition is gradually deviating from the physical world, making it difficult for them to feel the changes in the world in an effective way.

If the elderly are allowed to start the training of feeling the world again in the VR world, then it is possible to form a positive intervention for Alzheimer's disease, allowing patients to rebuild their connection with reality.

Based on this theory, Cao Lu and the team began to develop and tackle this technology. [LC3] On the front end, this system is equipped with customized real-life training functions, patients can simulate real scenes in VR, train cognition and life skills; on the back end, the system configures medical staff with MDM (mobile device management) console module, which is also the first system platform in China to use VR equipment as a unified control platform for medical devices. Through the BS architecture (browser-server architecture), medical staff can control the content, behavior, volume, repositioning and other elements of the headset, transforming the previous one-on-one rehabilitation training into a scalable and efficient solution.

Although the idea is good, but the idea that cannot be landed is only empty talk after all.

The first problem Cao Lu faces is the "original sin" of VR - vertigo. Young people will be dizzy when using VR for a long time, not to mention that the users of this system are mostly the elderly over 65 years old. The problem of vertigo cannot be solved, and the experience of the entire system cannot be discussed.

Although multiple factors, including latency, frame rate, and interactive feedback, can cause VR vertigo, in summary, it is due to the visual signals received by the brain vestibular, which cannot be coordinated with the user's own actions. In simple terms, if the user moves in the virtual world (such as using a handle stick) and is stationary in the real world, it will cause vertigo.

In order to combat the problem of vertigo, Cao Lu led the team to drastically abandon spatial movement, no matter how the user moves in reality, the perspective rotation is driven by the user itself and the movement in the training. At the same time, the user's use scene is also limited to a fixed location, minimizing the vertigo caused by spatial movement.

At the same time, Cao Lu stipulates that the design scheme is used in a sitting position, which on the one hand reduces the fatigue of the elderly for a long time, and on the other hand, the vertigo caused by automatic displacement is reduced.

"Mapping the spatial movements in the entire virtual world to the actions of the user himself can greatly avoid the problem of vertigo." Of course, to solve the problem of vertigo, in the short term, there is the "universal treadmill" of "Ready Player One", and in the long run, there is a brain-computer interface. But now we still mainly adopt a curtailment scheme, so that the user's experience is maximized in a small scene. "

In addition to vertigo, interaction is also a difficult point in the development of VR interventions in Alzheimer's disease systems. For older users, developers must make interactions simple and intuitive enough, but today's VR systems are still dominated by gamepad interactions. When the system of Virtual Reality Technology was just landed, most of the elderly were reluctant to use it.

The design that Cao Lu and the team first thought of was to have instructions built into the system. After a certain period of trial operation, the old man obviously could not learn it and could not understand the instructions. As a result, the team greatly changed the way of interaction, and the actual landing plan is to design only one interactive button, and all the buttons on the handle only perform one function, which greatly simplifies the use experience.

Subsequently, the team set up a turning function for some elderly people with difficulty turning; for some elderly people with limited mobility and physical paraplegia, the team allowed the system to be operated with one hand.

Compared with the stereotypical technical people, Cao Lu is obviously more business-minded. He did not have a rigid insistence on technology and products, but was more willing to flexibly face the actual needs and make products that could be landed, he said:

"Our main point is that what is made must be landed. We don't want to make a semi-finished product with a problematic core experience, we don't want to make a gimmick for telling a story, we don't want to do concepts that can only be realized in the future. We must now make a thing that can land, and continue to improve and upgrade this product. "

3

How do VR practitioners see the metaverse?

"Are there craftsmen in the metaverse now?"

When talking about the metaverse, Cao Lu did not clarify his point of view, but instead threw out such a question.

It is true that today's meta-universe track is chaotic, there are many storytellers, and there are very few people who do practical things. As a long-term follower of this field, we are certainly willing to believe that on the meta-universe track, there are "craftsmen" who sink their hearts to make products and content, and such doers abound in the circle of friends of Leifeng Network.

For the fire of the meta-universe concept, the VR industry must have a say. The concept has been hyped up, the former is still beautiful today, the latter has been hit hard, is looking for the opportunity to "counterattack" in the waste.

Cao Lu said that most of the companies that regard the "meta-universe" as a marketing book will not focus on real products; instead, those companies that do not advertise themselves as "meta-universes" are doing the basic construction of "meta-universes".

"These people are actually craftsmen, and if the word metaverse hadn't come out, I think we'd still be doing the same thing." It's not that we're chasing the concept, it's that the trend is just catching us. Cao Lu said.

Cao Lu's understanding of the metacosm is roughly consistent with the view we established earlier in the "Metacosm And Ten Days Talk". He argues that the broad "metacosm" as a figurative representation of the virtual world has been "eroding" our real lives since the invention of radio technology at the end of the 19th century. The digital lifestyle has been deepening over the past hundred years and occupies an increasingly important position in everyone's daily life. If you don't believe it, it's self-evident to look at your phone's screen usage time.

If the process of digitization will inevitably continue to deepen, XR, which is more immersive and closer to the physical world, is likely to become the next generation of computing platforms. Therefore, cao Lu believes that the VR industry must eventually be accepted by the general public. A former executive of LeTV, who is now starting an independent business, also told Lei Feng: Find the project closest to the user and the money.

Many VR practitioners interviewed by Leifeng Network have revealed a different reality: a large number of companies in the VR track use the "song and dance life" of the B-end or even the G-end to cover up the decline of the C-end.

Detaching from the C-end and from actual needs may be the biggest mistake made by late entrants in the VR industry.

In this regard, Cao Lu put forward a reflective perspective on the metaverse: In the metaverse, do users need to drive a car and go to the store to shop?

Many fantasies of metaverses are that they can reproduce a realistic real world in the virtual world and allow users to obtain a realistic real-life experience through new interaction methods. However, in the metaverse, will the user experience, which was once flattened and simplified, become complicated again?

For example, at present, when we shop online, the user interface is mainly based on pictures and text displayed in the form of cards, and users can receive information efficiently and easily "shop around".

In the metaverse conceived by some people, users also need to let the avatar "personally" go to the store to select products, and the operation is much more complicated. If the user interface is designed flat, it is inevitable to lose some of the "metaverse" immersive flavor; if the immersive interface commonly used by VR is used, it is obviously inefficient, violating the design principles of Internet products.

At the same time, VR is more "invasive" than other products such as mobile phones. In other words, VR erects a screen between the user and reality. VR and reality, users are usually faced with the dilemma of choosing one or the other. After wearing a VR headset, the user can only accept the content given in the headset, and is separated from the real world, unable to complete the rapid conversion between reality and virtual.

If the virtual world provided by VR can bring users a perfect experience, then users will be more willing to try VR and generate retention on VR. However, at this stage, the functions of VR are not comprehensive enough, biased towards fragmentation, and users will not have a strong willingness to "abandon" reality and choose VR.

If a function is ported to the metaverse and the user's experience is not improved or even compromised, then this feature is not suitable for the metaverse.

In other words, not all functions are suitable for VRization, "metacosmization".

Cao Lu said: "Many people regard VR as a carrier as a change in the metaverse. But the technical carrier is only a change in form, and there is no difference in essence. It's not that you put on VR, everything you do becomes a metaverse. It has only one essence – that is, to share information with others. I believe that quantitative change in experience does not cause qualitative change, which is a misunderstanding of many people about VR. "

4

epilogue

Returning to the essence of the metaverse, in Cao Lu's view, the metacosm is more like an ideology of almost faith than an Internet product. It is dominated by the "decentralized" thinking of co-creation, co-construction and co-ownership, which allows digital resources to remove barriers in the Internet and make people feel at their fingertips.

Having a large number of users believe in the metaverse at the same time may be a decisive factor in the future direction of the metaverse.

However, the concept of the metacosm is still in space, and there is a lack of actual builders to "fill the flesh" for the metacosm. The way to sell NFTs and sell land in the market is only a way out that practitioners think of at this stage.

As written in a previous article by Leifeng.com, the "infrastructure" of the metaverse will be the only way to realize the concept of the metacosm, and may also become an important way for users to understand the metacosm.

During her time in college, Cao Lu studied Buddhism in Japan for a period of time, and her daily classes were to preach the scriptures and knock on wooden fish. Despite his deep cultivation in the field of technology, Cao Lu believes that this period of time has benefited her a lot, and even Buddhism and the metaverse have inexplicable coincidences.

In fact, Buddhism is a ubiquitous science, it does not need to be visualized, but ordinary people are difficult to understand. We say that the Buddha has "three bodies," that is, three figurative forms to help three thousand people understand the philosophical ideas behind them. The metaverse probably also has such an idea: using figurative functions to build users' common belief in the metaverse. "

END