OBJECTIVE Fear of falling is defined as an ongoing concern about falling that is not explained by physical examination. Focusing on the psychological dimension of this pathology (phobic reaction to walking), we looked at how virtual reality associated with serious games can be used to treat this pathology. METHODS Participants with fear of falling were randomly assigned to either a treatment ...

This paper describes virtual reality and some of its potential applications in rehabilitation and therapy. Some aspects of this technology are discussed with respect to different problem areas (sensorimotor impairments, autism, learning difficulties), as well as previous research which investigated changes within some motor and motivation parameters in relation to rehabilitation of children wit...

[Purpose] The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of game-based virtual reality movement therapy plus mental practice on upper extremity function in chronic stroke patients with hemiparesis. [Subjects] The subjects were chronic stroke patients with hemiparesis. [Methods] Thirty subjects were randomly assigned to either the control group or experimental group. All subjects recei...

This paper demonstrates how physically disabled people can benefit from the innovative virtual reality techniques. Several specific examples show the applicability of virtual reality to the therapy and rehabilitation of people with various disabilities. In addition, the paper describes how physicians can use virtual reality as an advanced visualization tool for the diagnosis of physical disabil...

BACKGROUND Virtual reality and interactive video gaming have emerged as recent treatment approaches in stroke rehabilitation with commercial gaming consoles in particular, being rapidly adopted in clinical settings. This is an update of a Cochrane Review published first in 2011 and then again in 2015. OBJECTIVES Primary objective: to determine the efficacy of virtual reality compared with an ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effectiveness of computerized virtual reality (VR) training of the hemiparetic hand of patients poststroke using a system that provides repetitive motor reeducation and skill reacquisition. METHODS Eight subjects in the chronic phase poststroke participated in a 3-week program using their hemiparetic hand in a series of interactive computer games for 13 days of tr...

Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to be an effective way of teaching difficult concepts to students. However, a number of important questions related to immersion, collaboration and realism remain to be answered before truly efficient virtual learning environments can be designed. We present CyberMath, an avatar-based shared virtual environment for mathematics education that allows further st...