Virtual reality environments for rehabilitation of the upper limb after stroke

We describe an immersive and interactive experimental protocol developed in a virtual reality environment using the CAREN system. The environment allows the user to receive enhanced feedback about the quality and outcome of varied pointing movements made in a virtual elevator. Features of the virtual environment (representation of the user's body movement; collision detection) as well as details about the feedback provided to the user (knowledge of results and knowledge of performance) are outlined. The described training environment will be used in the rehabilitation of the upper limb for patients who have motor disorders due to stroke and other neurological conditions. The advantage of training upper limb pointing movements in this environment is that the task difficulty can be manipulated according to the user's level of motor impairment and the feedback can be manipulated to provide a more motivating and task-relevant training experience.