Games and virtual reality help stroke victims recover – Newspaper IOL

A doctoral project that involves the use of computers and games consoles is helping patients victims of Stroke (CVA) to regain their motor and cognitive abilities through virtual reality.

The project «NeuroRehab Lab ‘is being developed at the Institute for Interactive Technologies at the University of Madeira (M-ITI) by Ana Lucia Faria, and aims to use new technologies in the rehabilitation of stroke patients.

Ana Lucia Faria explained that the interactive tools training motor recovery, for example, ‘the arm affected by the stroke’, but also ‘treat deficits in memory, language, executive functions and attention. “

‘ In Rehab traditional, we have a repetition of movements and tasks to improve brain plasticity. Through virtual reality we can offer, not only in clinical areas, but also at home, the same methodologies of rehabilitation, but through simulation activities of daily living environments, “he said.

The researcher added that this methodology “will allow, after discharge, patients can make a better transfer what they were training for the context of their lives, but will also allow them to continue to do your workout at home using a computer.”

Virtual sets used in this method undergo a trip to the post office, running operations in ATM, trips to the supermarket or a pharmacy. In the future, intend to introduce more tasks.

This project came to Madeira through a foreign researcher who had started work in Barcelona and just leaned in motor rehabilitation of stroke.

After contact with Ana Lucia Faria, who was starting his PhD, the idea of ​​’joining motor and cognitive rehabilitation into one, creating a simulation tool for daily life activity’ emerged.

The project has “proven that motor improvements go hand in hand cognitive improvements and a patient develops cognitively also develops motor and vice versa level ‘, and this method is already being applied in some patients in the region.

‘At the moment, about 30 patients were already covered by the project, both in physical medicine and rehabilitation department at the Hospital Dr. Nelio Mendonça, João de Almada as the Hospital, “said Ana Lucia Faria, adding that patients comply the selection criteria and who have participated in three sessions per week, for a month.

“The idea is to integrate these virtual environments social networks and some things are already available online at our website,” he continued, stressing that ‘the tools are still in development, but the goal is to be provided for free so everyone can use at home and healthcare professionals can use in the clinical or not, private or public environments, “he added.

this project, Ana Lucia Faria, which is dedicated to cognitive area, working with the principal investigator and advisor, Spaniard Sergi Bermudez Badia, PhD in Neuroscience, and with a fellow computer scientist Athanasios Vourvotoulos handles the motor area .