Virtual reality-based action observation facilitates the acquisition of body-powered prosthetic control skills.
Manabu Yoshimura, Hiroshi Kurumadani, Junya Hirata and 8 others
PMID 32819412WHAT IT FOUND
In healthy participants using a body-powered prosthetic simulator, watching and imagining prosthetic control in VR did not improve a unilateral block-moving task more than other groups, but improved a bilateral knotting task more than control.
Key findings
01For the bilateral bowknot task, the first-person VR and third-person VR groups showed significantly greater relative improvement than the control group.
02For the unilateral Box and Block Test, performance increased across sessions in all groups, but there were no significant differences between groups.
03The VR groups reported higher immersion than the third-person tablet group, and higher immersion was associated with greater relative improvement on the bowknot task.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The participants were healthy young people, not upper-limb amputees, and the authors state that the results may differ in amputees. The study used a prosthetic simulator rather than a clinical prosthesis in daily life. The same tasks were used for training and testing, so it is unclear whether the effect generalises to other prosthetic tasks. The bowknot task is novel, and reference values and reliability were not available. Each group had only eight participants, and the paper does not state how participants were assigned to groups. The intervention combined video observation, imitation and motor imagery, so the separate contribution of VR cannot be identified. Only two 10-minute sessions were tested, and the optimal observation time is unknown.
Declared interests
The paper states the funder was Kawasaki Medical School.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that VR alone improves prosthetic control in amputees. The study used healthy young participants with a simulator, and participants also imitated the movements and imagined operating the prosthesis, so the separate contribution of VR cannot be identified.