Validity of Virtual Reality Environments for Sensorimotor Rehabilitation

Abstract

Sensorimotor rehabilitation is primarily aimed at improving motor ability so that people can regain their physical independence for the accomplishment of daily life tasks—such as self-care, work, and leisure activities. Following an injury to the central nervous system (CNS) such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, or cerebral palsy, for example, damage to cortical structures and white matter pathways involved in the production of motor output results in sensorimotor impairments such as changes in muscle tone, motor paralysis or weakness, This chapter describes the quality of different types of virtual reality (VR) environments and their influence on the production of movement. The chapter summarizes the current evidence on the validity of upper and lower limb movements made in different 2D and 3D VR environments. Movement patterns are considered directly as kinematic performance (e.g., endpoint trajectories) and motor quality measures (e.g., joint rotations), or indirectly, as surrogate measures of performance (e.g., heart rate). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)