VIP Showcase
How are virtual reality and sense of smell related?
Outside of my required courses for the Master of Public Health program at BSU, I’ve also been enrolled in a course called VARScent Reverse Alzheimer’s. VARScent is one of many Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) courses available at BSU, designed to teach students to work alongside other students and faculty as part of an interdisciplinary team. Innovative teamwork is the primary academic outcome, with the added bonus of potentially developing a commercialized product that assists a specific field.
The goal of our team is to build off the progress of previous semesters in the attempt to combine a virtual augmented reality (VAR) experience with scent, hence the “Scent” of “VARScent”. The idea came about based on the strong link between the olfactory system (smell) and memory. Researchers have found that loss of sense of smell can be an early symptom of various neurodegenerative conditions (dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, etc). The medical field is also lacking the infrastructure of widely-accessible and insurance-covered preventative cognitive assessments.
Our hope is that our VARScent device can become a diagnostic tool to detect cognitive decline earlier than current methods, but also serve a therapeutic purpose as multiple scents are added to the experience sometime in the future. I never know how to describe VARScent to friends and family, or whether people are really grasping what I’m saying when I do make an attempt. I like to talk, but I’m learning it’s sometimes better to avoid the blank stares and wait for a chance to give a visual explanation as well. That opportunity is soon approaching!
For those I’ve poorly explained the project to already, and those who find this project intriguing, BSU will be hosting the 2021 VIP Showcase virtually on Thursday, December 2 from 4-6 pm. Myself and the rest of the project team will be explaining the device in further depth, with an online poster and photos of the prototype for further clarification.
In order to sign up as a guest, there’s a simple registration process on the VIP site. I’d love to have as many people in attendance as possible, so feel free to spread this message along!
As always, thanks for reading and I hope to see you on December 2!
-Kyle