NYC seniors are skydiving, hiking the Alps and traveling the world — all while warding off dementia — with VR
On a summer afternoon when most New Yorkers were chaining themselves to the nearest air conditioner, the residents of the New Jewish Home on West 106th Street were enjoying a very active day.
There was the trip to Broadway, a cuddle with puppies, a diving adventure on the high seas and skydiving above the Swiss Alps — and all without breaking a sweat.
For Walter Delascasas, 77, the highlight of the day’s adventures was a nostalgic visit to the street in Havana where he grew up.
It was all still there — he was even able to “recognize the trees” from when he was a kid.
Delascasas and his neighbors were able to effortlessly travel the world — and still be home in time for dinner — with a little help from virtual reality company Mynd Immersive, which believes that the technology assumed to rot younger generations’ minds can boost the brains of the elderly.
And pixels aren’t just for kids: New Jewish is one of 60 nursing facilities in New York and New Jersey where the “Great American Elderverse,” as Mynd bills it, will fully roll out in the coming months as part of an initiative to improve senior citizens’ cognition and quality of life.
Seniors, with the help of caregivers, can slip on one of Mynd’s futuristic headsets and they’re plopped into a realistic panoramic environment — even places personal or nostalgic to the user — that can benefit mental health.
Through Google Earth and other tech, Mynd has created more than 200 “senior-friendly” games, immersive videos and virtual vacations that allow residents to “travel the world” without leaving the nursing home.
For most at this age, it offers them an experience they wouldn’t dream of in real life.
Brooklynite Elizabeth Albedia, 60, who engaged in a “Planet Earth”-style underwater diving simulation, said she felt she was “right there with the sharks” — but without the risk of getting chomped by the deep-sea predators.
“I never experienced that before,” Albedia told The Post.
Lorrie James avoided a jaunt with “Jaws” and instead opted for a virtual visit to the Great White Way to take in a performance of — and a behind-the-scenes peek at — the long-running Broadway hit “The Lion King.”
“The lion came actually onstage with the performers, and we were able to see what was going on backstage,” the 53-year-old told The Post. “You forget where you’re at at the present moment; [it’s] a thousand times better than using your imagination.”
And widower Cecilia Ferreiro, 65, from Ecuador, choked up while recounting how she digitally retraced a vacation to Spain that she’d taken with her husband 30 years ago.
“It looked a little different but the same atmosphere,” said Ferreiro. “I loved it.” In the future, she hopes to travel to virtual versions of Africa and Asia.
“The four walls [of nursing home rooms] become sometimes bland, sometimes depressing,” Chris Brickler, Mynd Immersive’s CEO and co-founder, told The Post, explaining that the company is “taking somebody that might be agitated about the state that they’re in, allowing them to go to a beach or a mountain or a lake.”
Along with lessening feelings of loneliness, virtual reality games have been shown to enhance memory by improving players’ ability to differentiate between old and new environments, according to research.
These VR adventures are part of a treatment known as reminiscence therapy, which typically involves showing seniors photos and other reminders of their youth to cultivate joy. A 2022 study found that VR reminiscence improved “anxiety, apathy and cognitive function immediately after intervention in individuals at elderly care facilities.”
According to a recent Stanford University study conducted in collaboration with Mynd, 79% of older adults said they felt more positive after using the technology and more than half felt less isolated.
Plus, these “Avatar”-esque adventures, Brickler said, “allow folks that are less mobile and sometimes cognitively on the decline to feel like they have some agency.”
And it’s working at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Living, which started with several headsets from Rendever in 2021.
The residential care home now has around 50 headsets for daily group immersion sessions, ranging from virtual vacations to spinning classes.
David Siegelman, Hebrew Home’s senior vice president of quality and corporate compliance, said he’s noticed a positive effect on residents.
The communal setup of the Rendever VR sessions helps seniors bond, explaining how he’s seen users “increase the size of their social networks” and even participate in more community events outside of the virtual world.
While Siegelman said it’s “just one tool in our toolbelt for dementia,” one person with advanced dementia was able to reconnect with his musical background as an opera singer thanks to VR.
“[The staff] would bring in an iPad or an iPod with opera. He would smile and he’d like it,” he said. “We couldn’t find opera on the VR, but we found a whole philharmonic performance.”
“We put the headset on him and we played it, and we just sat back and we let him watch it,” Siegelman recalled. “It came to an end, and as we’re taking off the headset, he starts breaking out an operatic song.
“You could see how it was comforting to him.”
