The use of fully immersive virtual reality for screening neurodegenerative diseases: A systematic review of behavioral and diagnostic outcomes

This review systematically describes the application of fully immersive virtual reality (VR) in the early screening of neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on studies using head-mounted devices to simulate real-life tasks.Task types such as spatial memory, daily living simulations, and executive function assessments have demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD).Approximately one third of studies combined machine learning techniques to analyze multimodal behavioral data (e.g., path deviations, task duration, and language responses), significantly improving diagnostic accuracy.This study highlights methodological heterogeneity, small sample sizes, and the lack of longitudinal studies as current research limitations, and calls for future standardized, multicenter, and long-term follow-up studies to validate the predictive validity and real-world applicability of VR tools.