COgnitive Intervention to Restore Attention Using Nature Environment

Heart failure (HF) is a prevalent serious chronic illness that affects 6.5 million American. Among HF patients, prevalence of attention impairment is reported as 15-27%. Attention is fundamental to human activities including HF self-care. However, cognitive interventions focusing on attention are scarce in HF. The investigators developed a new cognitive intervention with immersive virtual reality technology and created a prototype of the virtual reality-based natural restorative environment intervention (Nature-VR). The prototype was feasible and showed larger effects in improving attention among 10 HF patients. In this 2-group randomized controlled pilot study, specific aims are to: 1) examine preliminary efficacy of Nature-VR compared with Urban-VR on improving attention; 2) examine preliminary efficacy of Nature-VR compared with Urban-VR on HF self-care and health-related quality of life; and 3) explore possible biomarkers of attention in HF. This study is important and novel because this is the first intervention study targeting attention using virtual reality technology and investigating possible biomarkers associated with attention in HF patients.