Embodied Labs creates immersive training for staff and caregivers by Marilynn Larkin, MA

As a teenager, Carrie Shaw embarked on a journey that would last more than 12 years: helping her family care for her mother, who was diagnosed at age 49 with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. At one point, Shaw recalls, she struggled to explain her mother’s resulting visual impairment to professional caregivers. So, she let them experience it by modifying a pair of glasses, resulting in distorted vision and vision gaps. The caregivers understood immediately what her mother was experiencing--and Shaw understood she had hit upon a strategy that could be transformative for professionals working with individuals with dementia and other forms of cognitive and physical impairments. That strategy involved virtual reality (VR) technology. In 2016, motivated by her experiences, Shaw founded California-based Embodied Labs, headquartered in Los Angeles. She told the Journal on Active Aging, "Embodied Labs accelerates our ability to understand health conditions and life transitions that mainly affect older adults, so we can meaningfully connect and empathize."