Conjunctive rehabilitation of multiple cognitive domains for chronic stroke patients in virtual reality

Abstract

Classically, cognitive deficits have been studied and treated in isolation from each other. A stroke patient is classified as being memory impaired, having executive dysfunction or showing attentional deficits after which a dedicated rehabilitation therapy is given. Studies seldom looked at the relationship between these different cognitive domains and syndromes, although, there is evidence that they might share common neuronal substrates and do not occur in isolation. Here, we propose a novel rehabilitation method in virtual reality to treat cognitive deficits in conjunction and report the preliminary results of an ongoing randomized controlled clinical trial. The current results suggest that in a homogeneous patient group the cognitive deficits are correlated and that the individual impairment level can be optimally addressed through an adaptive training paradigm.