Contribution of Virtual Environments to the Perception of Balance Rehabilitation Tasks: A Psychophysiological Study

Abstract

About half of the people with disabilities in Colombia manifest having impairments in the lower extremities, which requires them to perform any kind of physical rehabilitation, mainly balance recovery sessions. Often, these processes become tedious and monotonous for patients. Therefore, to address this issue, it is necessary to determine how emotional and psychophysiological responses are related to rehabilitation activities. We present a study performed by 13 healthy participants that includes the use of emotional self-reports and simultaneous psychophysiological measuring (15 features extracted) for two balance tasks, one based on regular rehab procedures and the other into a 3D virtual reality game. Results from this study shows that arousal (44%) and valence (24%) as well as heart rate (85%), skin conductance responses (40%) and respiratory rate (80%) outcomes tend to increase in the second task compared to first one. Though preliminary, these results indicate that rehabilitation process carried out through combination of VR environments, serious games and innovative technologies could improve balance recovery sessions, turning them into an enjoyable activity for participants.