Virtual Reality Rehabilitation of Spatial Abilities after Brain Damage

Current rehabilitation of navigation and spatial orientation ability after brain damage is generally focused on training within the rehabilitation hospital or the patient's home as part of common physio- and occupational therapy sessions. To further promote generalization of gained abilities and to quantify functional improvements, this project aims at developing a Virtual Reality (VR) application that can be used for training and assessment of spatial orientation and navigation skills in brain-damaged patients. The training is administered after the standard hospital rehabilitation training is completed. Additionally, the program will be used as an assessment tool to quantify the participants' wayfinding performance. The data will be compared with real-world navigation performance in tasks of similar complexity to evaluate real-world transfer of the VR training. Currently, the application is under development and basic functionality and data acquisition are being implemented.