Search Results (12)

Background/Objectives: Dementia leads to cognitive decline, affecting memory, reasoning, and daily activities, often requiring full-time care. Multisensory stimulation (MSS), combined with cognitive tasks, can slow this decline, improving mood, communication, and overall quality of life. This systematic review aims to explore methods that utilize MSS in the rehabilitation of patients with dementia. Its clinical value is rooted in its ability to offer a deep comprehension of how MSS can be successfully incorporated into rehabilitation treatments. Methods: Studies were identified from an online search of PubMed, EBSCOhost, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Embase, and Scopus databases with a search time frame from 2014 to 2024. This review has been registered on Open OSF (n) 3KUQX. Results: Pilot studies investigating MSS interventions, encompassing Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST), Sonas therapy, and combined physical–cognitive exercise programs, have yielded mixed findings in individuals with dementia. CST has demonstrated significant improvements in general cognitive function, particularly in language skills, offering a promising approach for cognitive enhancement. Sonas therapy, while showing positive trends in some studies, does not consistently achieve statistically significant outcomes across all cognitive domains. Conversely, combined exercise programs have shown efficacy in improving dual-task performance, suggesting benefits for motor–cognitive integration. MSS delivered within specialized environments like Snoezelen rooms consistently produces positive effects on mood, reducing agitation and promoting relaxation. Conclusions: This review emphasizes how MSS can enhance cognitive, emotional, and behavioral results for individuals with dementia. It is essential for future research to standardize protocols, incorporate advanced technologies such as virtual reality, and rectify diversity gaps. Collaboration between different fields will improve the effectiveness and usefulness of MSS in caring for individuals with dementia. Full article

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurological development with social and communication deficits and sensory abnormalities. Sensory problems have a significant impact on daily life. Multisensory environments (MSEs), such as Snoezelen^® rooms, offer controlled sensory stimulation. This study aims to evaluate the effect of MSE intervention with self-controlled sensory interactions on adaptive developmental skills and sensory responses in preschool ASD children. Methods: This pilot study was single-blind, randomized, controlled, and adhered to the CONSORT guidelines. Twenty participants were recruited and randomized into two groups: the control group (CG) underwent treatment as usual (TAU) with individual rehabilitation sessions of psychomotor therapy. The experimental group (EG) underwent TAU integrated with the use of an MSE. Developmental abilities and severity levels were assessed, pre-post, with the Psychoeducational Profile, Third Edition (PEP-3) and the Second Edition Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS-2). Results: A significant difference in taste, smell, and tactile behaviors according to the CARS-2, as well as in gross motor skills according to the PEP-3, was observed in the EG. Conclusions: This pilot study suggests that MSE-integrated intervention may be a valid strategy to improve self-management of the sensory profile in autistic individuals. Further studies are needed to better identify the intervention methodology and effectiveness. Full article

Multi-sensory environments (MSEs) are specialised spaces purposely designed to stimulate the senses, whilst providing a calming and relaxing environment for leisure and enjoyment, predominantly intended for disabled people. Most MSEs are in institutions, hospitals, or educational settings, with a few in community-based settings. We explored disabled users’ experiences of a community based MSE in a large metropolitan area in New Zealand, with a view to expanding access to MSE-type environments within the area. We used a convergent mixed method design with a web-based electronic survey (e-survey; n = 105), as well as semi-structured interviews (n = 14) with disabled MSE users (adults and children), who were supported, where necessary, by their support person/s. We collected the MSE users’ demographics, frequency of use with respect to age, disability, and ethnicity, and experiences of the room, equipment, and accessibility. The participants and their support persons’ perspectives about their experiences of using the MSE were represented by four themes: (i) Self-determination; (ii) Enhancing wellbeing opportunities; (iii) the MSE itself; (iv) Accessibility. While the MSE was considered positively, the MSE experience could be enhanced by addressing access challenges and broadening the scope of equipment to improve the usability and make it a more inclusive environment for all. Full article

(1) Background: Emotional regulation, distress and relational conflicts often occur during hospitalization and rehabilitation on psychiatric units, especially in patients suffering from severe and persistent mental disorders. While widely used in children and geriatric patients, little literature exists on the use and outcomes of alternative rooms in the context of forensic and regular psychiatric units for adult patients. Considering the scarcity of the literature on alternative use, this study is motivated by the following research question: what are the main uses and outcomes of alternative rooms in the context of forensic and regular psychiatric units? The main objective of this study is to conduct a scoping review of the use and outcomes of alternative rooms for the context of psychiatric inpatients. (2) Methods: A systematic search was performed in the electronic databases of MedLine, Web of Science, PsycNet (PsycINFO) and Google Scholar from their inception dates until 2022. (3) Results: A total of nine studies were analyzed. Sensory, multisensory rooms, Snoezelen, and comfort rooms are the types of alternative rooms discussed in these studies. Distress and anxiety reduction, increase in self-esteem, impact on seclusion rates, patient–staff communication and alliances, heart and respiration rate reduction, and improvement of alexithymia were identified among the main uses and outcomes of these rooms. (4) Conclusions: The scarcity of literature available to draw information from for this review and possible impact on improving patient outcomes and quality of treatment in psychiatric units opens the door to future studies to better understand the efficacy of such rooms. Research into the ideal implementation tactics of such rooms, long-term outcomes, and the influence on diverse patient demographics could be areas of improvement in the use of alternative rooms. Full article

Studies have shown how built environments for hospitals can influence psychological and physiological conditions and status for childbearing women. Sensory attributes of birth spaces can enhance comfort, feelings of wellbeing, and, to some extent, clinical outcomes. Recently, some case studies of multisensory rooms for the birth environment have been developed based on, e.g., Snoezelen room examples. The aim of this research is to develop an overview of how sensory aspects for birth environments are designed, used, and tested in current and recent studies. Case studies were selected according to sensory aspect significance, observing space factors, and relationship with the experience and comfort of users (women, partners, midwives). All case studies were analysed to collect information about the design and validation process. The collected data were organised in categories and compared for the selected case studies. Main findings were summarised in tables with the aim of underlining how sensory design processes and projects can positively influence comfort for birthing. Conclusions about how to bring forward the issue of sensory design so that it can be used and applied to support childbearing women is discussed. Full article

The sensitivity and interest toward well-being and health inside work and living environments is constantly growing. Wood is perceived as a natural material by people and its presence in a room generally induces beneficial effects on human beings. In this research, two real-sized identical wood and not-wood rooms have been built to study the psychological effects of a wooden indoor environment on attention recovery and restorativeness. After a multisensory evaluation of different kind of materials used in housing, participants were asked to evaluate the two rooms and then to perform an attention test two times, interspersed with a pause in one of the two rooms. The results show that wood samples are more appreciated than all other materials and that a wood environment induces an attentional resources’ recovery. These findings bring new insights in the interaction between human beings and indoor environments. This new knowledge should be taken into account in the design or renovation of buildings by architects and builders. Full article

Research on Accessible Digital Musical Instruments (ADMIs) has highlighted the need for participatory design methods, i.e., to actively include users as co-designers and informants in the design process. However, very little work has explored how pre-verbal children with Profound and Multiple Disabilities (PMLD) can be involved in such processes. In this paper, we apply in-depth qualitative and mixed methodologies in a case study with four students with PMLD. Using Participatory Design with Proxies (PDwP), we assess how these students can be involved in the customization and evaluation of the design of a multisensory music experience intended for a large-scale ADMI. Results from an experiment focused on communication of musical haptics highlighted the diversity in employed interaction strategies used by the children, accessibility limitations of the current multisensory experience design, and the importance of using a multifaceted variety of qualitative and quantitative methods to arrive at more informed conclusions when applying a design with proxies methodology. Full article

The feasibility of working on cognitive functions with children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) inside Multisensory Interactive Rooms (MIRs) has been poorly investigated, even if sensory atypicalities are common in ASD and usual intervention rooms could represent a challenging sensory setting for patients with ASD. We hypothesized that the possibility to calibrate the sensory stimulation offered by this type of environment, able to promote a positive emotional state in patients with ASD, can consequently favor the interaction with the therapist and the motivation towards activities targeting cognitive functions. High- and low-functioning children and low-functioning adolescents/adults underwent five sessions in a fully digitalized MIR, working on sustained attention, selective attention, association, single inhibition, receptive communication, verbalization, and turn. We developed specific protocols calibrated for sensory stimulation and difficulty level based on the characteristics of the participants. We found statistically significant improvements in all functions, except association, in the children’s group. Therefore, a fully digitalized MIR seems suitable for intervention on cognitive functions in ASDs, but further investigations are needed to better address possible differences related to age and functioning level. Full article

The monitoring of human activity and vital signs plays a significant role in remote health-care. Radar provides a non-contact monitoring approach without privacy and illumination concerns. However, multiple people in a narrow indoor environment bring dense multipaths for activity monitoring, and the received vital sign signals are heavily distorted with body movements. This paper proposes a framework based on Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) and Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) radars to address these challenges, designing intelligent spatial-temporal information fusion for activity and vital sign monitoring. First, a local binary pattern (LBP) and energy features are extracted from FMCW radar, combined with the wavelet packet transform (WPT) features on IR-UWB radar for activity monitoring. Then the additional information guided fusing network (A-FuseNet) is proposed with a modified generative and adversarial structure for vital sign monitoring. A Cascaded Convolutional Neural Network (CCNN) module and a Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) module are designed as the fusion sub-network for vital sign information extraction and multisensory data fusion, while a discrimination sub-network is constructed to optimize the fused heartbeat signal. In addition, the activity and movement characteristics are introduced as additional information to guide the fusion and optimization. A multi-radar dataset with an FMCW and two IR-UWB radars in a cotton tent, a small room and a wide lobby is constructed, and the accuracies of activity and vital sign monitoring achieve 99.9% and 92.3% respectively. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority and robustness of the proposed framework. Full article

As the acquisition of very high resolution (VHR) images becomes easier, the complex characteristics of VHR images pose new challenges to traditional machine learning semantic segmentation methods. As an excellent convolutional neural network (CNN) structure, U-Net does not require manual intervention, and its high-precision features are widely used in image interpretation. However, as an end-to-end fully convolutional network, U-Net has not explored enough information from the full scale, and there is still room for improvement. In this study, we constructed an effective network module: residual module under a multisensory field (RMMF) to extract multiscale features of target and an attention mechanism to optimize feature information. RMMF uses parallel convolutional layers to learn features of different scales in the network and adds shortcut connections between stacked layers to construct residual blocks, combining low-level detailed information with high-level semantic information. RMMF is universal and extensible. The convolutional layer in the U-Net network is replaced with RMMF to improve the network structure. Additionally, the multiscale convolutional network was tested using RMMF on the Gaofen-2 data set and Potsdam data sets. Experiments show that compared to other technologies, this method has better performance in airborne and spaceborne images. Full article

The focus of the building industry and research is shifting from delivering satisfactory spaces to going beyond what is merely acceptable with a wave of new research and practice dedicated to exploring how the built environment can support task performance and enhance people’s health and well-being. The present study addresses the role of acoustics in this paradigm shift. Indoor soundscape research has recently emerged as an approach that brings a perceptual perspective on building and room acoustics in order to shape built environments that “sound good” according to building occupants’ preference and needs. This paper establishes an initial discussion over some of the open questions in this field of research that is still in an embryonic stage. A thematic analysis of structured interviews with a panel of experts offered a range of perspectives on the characterization, management, and design of indoor soundscapes and health-related outcomes. The discussion pointed out the importance of both perceptual and multisensory research and integrated participatory design practices to enable a holistic view regarding the complex building–user interrelations and the design of just cities. Soundscape methodologies tailored to the peculiarities of indoor soundscapes can help to measure and predict the human perceptual response to the acoustic stimuli in context, thus reducing the risk of mismatches between expected and real building experiences. This perceptual perspective is expected to widen the scientific evidence for the negative and positive impacts of the acoustic environment on human health, well-being, and quality of life. This will support prioritizing the role of acoustics in building design and challenge many current design practices that are based on a noise control approach. Full article

The intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital is an environment subjected to ceaseless noise. Patient alarms contribute to the saturated auditory environment and often overwhelm healthcare providers with constant and false alarms. This may lead to alarm fatigue and prevent optimum patient care. In response, a multisensory alarm system developed with consideration for human neuroscience and basic music theory is proposed as a potential solution. The integration of auditory, visual, and other sensory output within an alarm system can be used to convey more meaningful clinical information about patient vital signs in the ICU and operating room to ultimately improve patient outcomes. Full article