Towards personalized immersive virtual reality neurorehabilitation: a human-centered design.
Salvatore Luca Cucinella, Joost C F de Winter, Erik Grauwmeijer and 2 others
PMID 39833912WHAT IT FOUND
Neurorehabilitation experts described training environments for brain injury as specific, meaningful, versatile, educational, safe, and supportive.
For virtual reality, they recommended adjusting stimuli, offering video instructions, realistic tasks, and monitoring fatigue. These are design recommendations, not tested treatments.
Key findings
01Experts described suitable conventional training environments as Specific, Meaningful, Versatile, Educational, Safe, and Supportive.
02Experts strongly agreed that therapists should adjust interaction levels to cognitive capacity and consider patient capacities and social circumstances.
03Experts proposed low-demand virtual environments as static and empty, and video instructions to help patients with aphasia.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
No patients or caregivers were included. The findings are expert recommendations, not patient outcomes. The studies used a small number of experts, mostly from one Dutch rehabilitation centre. They may not apply in other countries or settings. The same two physical therapists and two occupational therapists took part in more than one study. The questionnaire statements used the word should. This may have made respondents agree with what they thought was desirable. The workshop started from a familiar virtual training room. This may have limited creative solutions. One researcher did the main thematic analysis. More independent reviewers might have reduced bias. The paper does not test whether virtual reality improves motor, cognitive, or speech outcomes. The authors say that realistic virtual environments need empirical testing for transfer of learning.
Declared interests
Funded by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. No competing interests are reported in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that immersive virtual reality improves recovery. The study included no patients and measured no outcomes. It reports expert design recommendations.