Pre-injury psychosocial and demographic factors may be more important than injury severity for predicting some long-term functional outcomes post-TBI. It would likely be beneficial to assess these factors in the inpatient setting, with input from a multidisciplinary team, as an early understanding of prognostic indicators can help guide treatment for optimal functional outcomes.
BACKGROUND: Virtual reality games and simulations have been utilized successfully for motor rehabilitation of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Little is known, however, how TBI-related cognitive decline affects learning of motor tasks in virtual environments. OBJECTIVE: To fill this gap, we examined learning within a virtual reality game involving various reaching motions in 14 patients with TBI and 15 healthy individuals with different cognitive abilities. METHODS: All participants practiced ten 90-second gaming trials to assess various aspects of motor learning. Cognitive abilities were assessed with a battery of tests including measures of memory, executive functioning, and visuospatial ability. RESULTS: Overall, participants with TBI showed both reduced performance and a slower learning rate in the virtual reality game compared to healthy individuals. Numerous correlations between overall performance and several of the cognitive ability domains were revealed for both the patient and control groups, with the best predictor being overall cognitive ability.
CONCLUSIONS:The results may provide a starting point for rehabilitation programs regarding which cognitive domains interact with motor learning.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.