Make Rehab Fun: Virtual Reality & Therapeutic Gaming

Real Results

Virtual though the experience may be, the results are very real.

“My favorite day is when a patient comes in to a computer therapy lab session and says, ‘Guess what I was able to do?’ because of what they did in here,” he said. “It gave them that extra capacity to brush their hair‚ something that’s simple that we take for granted every day—brushing your hair or your teeth or feeding yourself or putting your shirt on. And when they say, ‘I finally did it,’ that, to me, makes a good day.”

Thomas R. Collins is a freelance writer living in South Florida.

References

1. Matamala-Gomez M, Donegan T, Bottiroli S, et al. Immersive virtual reality and virtual embodiment for pain relief. Front Hum Neurosci. 2019;13:279.
2. Milgram P, Takemura H, Utsumi A, Kishino F. Augmented reality: A class of displays on the reality-virtuality continuum. SPIE. 1994;2351:282–292.
3. Aminov A, Rogers JM, Middleton S, et al. What do randomized controlled trials say about virtual rehabilitation in stroke? A systematic literature review and meta-analysis of upper-limb and cognitive outcomes. J Neuroeng Rehabil. 2018 Mar 27;15(1):29.