Treatment For Lesions
Virtual reality therapy has two promising potential benefits for treatment of hemispatial neglect with lesion patients including: improvement of diagnostic techniques and as a supplement to rehabilitation techniques.
Current diagnostic techniques usually involve pen and paper tests like the line bisection test. Though these tests have provided relatively accurate diagnostic results, advances in Virtual Reality Therapy (VRT) have proven these tests to not be completely thorough. Dvorkin et al used a camera system that immersed the patient into a virtual reality world and required the patient to grasp or move object in the world, through tracking of arm and hand movements. These techniques revealed that pen and paper tests provide relatively accurate qualitative diagnoses of hemispatial neglect patients, but VRT provided accurate mapping into a 3-dimensional space, revealing areas of space that were thought to be neglected but which patients had at least some awareness. Patients were also retested 10 months from initial measurements, during which each went through regular rehabilitation therapy, and most showed measurably less neglect on virtual reality testing whereas no measureable improvements were shown in the line bisection test.
ii. Virtual Reality Therapy has also proven to be effective in rehabilitation of lesion patients suffering from neglect. A study was conducted with 24 individuals suffering from hemispatial neglect. A control group of 12 individuals underwent conventional rehabilitation therapy including visual scanning training, while the virtual reality group (VR) were immersed in 3 virtual worlds, each with a specific task. The programs consisted of 1. “Bird and Ball” in which a patient touches a flying ball with his or her hand and turns it into a bird 2. “Coconut,” in which a patient catches a coconut falling from a tree while moving around 3. “Container” in which a patient moves a box carried in a container to the opposite side. Each of the patients of VR went through 3 weeks, 5 days a week, of 30 minute intervals emerged in these programs. The controls went through the equivalent time in traditional rehabilitation therapies. Each patient took the star cancellation test, line bisection test, and Catherine Bergego Scale (CBS) 24 hours before and after the three-week treatment to assess the severity of unilateral spatial neglect. The VR group showed a higher increase in the star cancellation test and CBS scores after treatment than the control group (p<0.05), but both groups did not show any difference in the line bisection test and K-MBI before and after treatment. These results suggest that virtual reality programs can be more effective then conventional rehabilitation and thus should be further researched.
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