As this goal-oriented rehabilitation program in MCI resulted in some improvements in cognition, occupational performance, and QoL, further randomized controlled studies are warranted.

Assessment of motor and process skills reflects brain-injured patients' ability to resume independent living better than neuropsychological tests.

Virtual Reality (VR) as a complementary tool for medical practitioners in the assessment and rehabilitation of people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) is discussed. A pilot-study has been undertaken on a prototype VR assessment tool. The design involved nine occupational therapists with expertise in the care of traumatic brain injured patients and one (computer experienced) patient. The aim was to begin a dialogue and to ascertain the potential of a VR system. A common method for occupational therapists to assess function and ability is to ask a patient to brew coffee. From the performance of such a task, an individual's "functional signature" can be determined. The prototype was built using Superscape, a personal computer based VR system, to be close to the real coffee making task, including effects of making mistakes, realistic graphics and sound effects. The world was designed to be as easy to use and intuitive as possible, though problems of mental abstraction level, transfer of training and realistic interaction have yet to be resolved. The comments from the test participants have highlighted problem areas, given positive insight and pointed out other scenarios where VR may be of use in the rehabilitation of people with a traumatic brain injury.

It is speculated that virtual environments (VE) might be used as a training tool in brain injury rehabilitation. The rehabilitation process often involves practicing socalled instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), such as shopping, cooking, and using a telephone. If a brain injury patient is to practice such activities in a VE, the patient must be able to navigate the viewpoint and interact with virtual objects in an understandable way. People with brain injury may be less tolerant to a poor interface and a VE might therefore become unusable due to, for example, an unsuitable input device. In this paper we present two studies aimed to do initial usability testing of VE interaction methods on people without experience of 3D computer graphics. In the first study four navigation input device configurations were compared: the IntelliKeys keyboard and the Microsoft Sidewinder joystick, both programmed with two and three degrees of freedom (DOF). The purpose of the second study was to evaluate a method for interaction with objects, and to find a sufficiently usable input device for this purpose. The keyboard was found to be more suitable for navigation tasks in which the user wants to give the viewpoint a more advantageous position and orientation for carrying out a specific task. No big differences could be found between two and three DOFs. The method for interaction with objects was found to work sufficiently well. No difference in performance could be found between mouse and touch screen, but some evidence was found that they affect the usability of the VE interface in different ways.