An electronic device for rehabilitation of senile dementia patients.

Senile dementia patients are usually considered hopeless--incapable of learning or improving. There is hope for improvement in such patients, however, and certain techniques effective in enhancing alertness in other brain-damaged patients can be helpful to these patients. A simple, widely available electronic television game is used, and a special training technique was designed to teach the patients how to successfully play the game.

Treating perceptual organization deficits in nonneglecting RBD stroke patients.

Thirty-five right brain-damaged (RBD) stroke patients, enrolled in active rehabilitation programs, participated in this study. Patients were selected on the basis of their evidenced deficits in performing complex visuo-cognitive tasks and the absence of overt evidence of unilateral visual-spatial neglect. Seventeen of the 35 patients were randomly chosen to receive a training program (lasting approximately 1 month) designed to establish a systematic strategy of organizing complex visual material.