Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano , Milan, Italy.
Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart , Milan, Italy.
Expert Rev Med Devices. 2020 Oct;17(10):1035-1061. doi: 10.1080/17434440.2020.1825939. Epub 2020 Oct 6.
Neurological diseases frequently cause adult-onset disability and have increased the demand for rehabilitative interventions. Neurorehabilitation has been progressively relying on computer-assisted programs and, more recently, on virtual reality (VR). Current reviews explore VR-based neurorehabilitation for assessing and treating the most common neurological pathologies. However, none of them explored specifically the impact of VR on multiple cognitive domains.
The present work is a review of 6 years of literature (2015-2020) on VR in neurorehabilitation with the purpose of analyzing its effects on memory, attention, executive functions, language, and visuospatial ability.
Our review suggests that VR-based neurorehabilitation showed encouraging results for executive functions and visuospatial abilities particularly for both acute and neurodegenerative conditions. Conversely, memory, and attention outcomes are conflicting, and language did not show significant improvements following VR-based rehabilitation. Within five years, it is plausible that VR-based intervention would be provided in standalone and mobile-based platforms that won't need a PC to work, with reduced latency and improved user interaction.
神经疾病常导致成人发病后的残疾，并增加了对康复干预的需求。神经康复逐渐依赖于计算机辅助程序，最近还依赖于虚拟现实（VR）。目前的综述探讨了基于 VR 的神经康复，以评估和治疗最常见的神经病理学。然而，它们都没有专门探讨 VR 对多个认知领域的影响。
本工作是对 2015 年至 2020 年 6 年来 VR 在神经康复中的文献的综述，目的是分析其对记忆、注意力、执行功能、语言和视空间能力的影响。
我们的综述表明，基于 VR 的神经康复对执行功能和视空间能力显示出可喜的结果，特别是对急性和神经退行性疾病。相反，记忆和注意力的结果存在冲突，语言在基于 VR 的康复后并没有显示出显著的改善。在五年内，基于 VR 的干预可能会在独立和移动平台上提供，不需要 PC 即可运行，延迟降低，用户交互得到改善。
