Ankle passive and active movement training in children with acute brain injury using a wearable robot.

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a wearable robotic device in guiding isometric torque generation and passive-active movement training for ankle motor recovery in children with acute brain injury.

Participants/setting: Ten inpatient children with acute brain injury being treated in a rehabilitation hospital.

Design: Daily robot-guided ankle passive-active movement therapy for 15 sessions, including isometric torque generation under real-time feedback, stretch-ing, and active movement training with motivating games using a wearable ankle rehabilitation robot.

Virtual reality and cognitive rehabilitation: a review of current outcome research.

Background: Recent advancement in the technology of virtual reality (VR) has allowed improved applications for cognitive rehabilitation.

Objectives: The aim of this review is to facilitate comparisons of therapeutic efficacy of different VR interventions.

Methods: A systematic approach for the review of VR cognitive rehabilitation outcome research addressed the nature of each sample, treatment apparatus, experimental treatment protocol, control treatment protocol, statistical analysis and results.

A "virtually minimal" visuo-haptic training of attention in severe traumatic brain injury.

Background: Although common during the early stages of recovery from severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), attention deficits have been scarcely investigated. Encouraging evidence suggests beneficial effects of attention training in more chronic and higher functioning patients. Interactive technology may provide new opportunities for rehabilitation in inpatients who are earlier in their recovery.

Treatment challenges with profound behaviour disturbance after traumatic brain injury: a case report.

Background: Severe behavioural disturbances exhibited during the earliest stages of recovery from severe traumatic brain injury often limit the ability to provide standard care. Studies that focus on treatment options for inpatients with such behaviours are scarce. There is limited guidance on how to approach therapy that will maximize the patient's tolerance and participation and how to measure meaningful progress.

Mapping the neglected space: gradients of detection revealed by virtual reality.

Background: Spatial neglect affects perception along different dimensions. However, there is limited availability of 3-dimensional (3D) methods that fully map out a patient's volume of deficit, although this could guide clinical management.

Objective: To test whether patients with neglect exhibit simple contralesional versus complex perceptual deficits and whether deficits are best described using Cartesian (rectangular) or polar coordinates.

Tolerance of a virtual reality intervention for attention remediation in persons with severe TBI.

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility of applying virtual reality and robotics technology to improve attention in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the early stages of recovery.

Methods: A sample of TBI patients (n=18, aged 19-73) who were receiving acute inpatient rehabilitation completed three-dimensional cancellation exercises over two consecutive days in an interactive virtual environment that minimized distractions and that integrated both visual and haptic (tactile) stimuli. Observations of behaviour during the intervention and of the instructions needed to encourage compliance were recorded.

Effects of roll visual motion on online control of arm movement: reaching within a dynamic virtual environment.

Reaching toward a visual target involves the transformation of visual information into appropriate motor commands. Complex movements often occur either while we are moving or when objects in the world move around us, thus changing the spatial relationship between our hand and the space in which we plan to reach. This study investigated whether rotation of a wide field-of-view immersive scene produced by a virtual environment affected online visuomotor control during a double-step reaching task.

Reaching within a dynamic virtual environment.

Background: Planning and execution of reaching requires a series of computational processes that involve localization of both the target and initial arm position, and the translation of this spatial information into appropriate motor commands that bring the hand to the target. We have investigated the effects of shifting the visual field on visuomotor control using a virtual visual environment in order to determine how changes in visuo-spatial relations alter motor planning during a reach.

Methods: Five healthy subjects were seated in front of an immersive, stereo virtual scene while reaching for a visual target that remained stationary in space or unpredictably shifted to a second position (either to the right or left of the first target) with different inter-stimulus intervals.

Automatic segmentation as a tool for examining the handwriting process of children with dysgraphic and proficient handwriting.

The purpose of this study was to use an x-y digitizer to collect handwriting samples typical of those written by the child in his or her natural environment, to analyze these samples with novel segmentation algorithms, and to present them visually in ways that illuminate spatial and temporal dynamic features amongst children with dysgraphic and proficient handwriting. While using the POET software (Penmanship Objective Evaluation Tool), a paragraph was copied onto paper affixed to an x-y digitizer by third-grade students, 14 with proficient and 14 with poor handwriting. A segmentation algorithm was developed to automatically isolate writing segments.

Reaching within video-capture virtual reality: using virtual reality as a motor control paradigm.

We have developed a virtual reality (VR) system that integrates a three-dimensional tracking device with a video-capture VR platform to record upper limb movements. The influence of target velocity on planning and execution of reaching movements was studied in five healthy subjects. Our initial results suggest that a target's velocity is considered when planning an interceptive action and that a hand reaching toward a moving virtual target is controlled in a similar way to how it is in the real visual environment.