Computer Games Improve Recovery from Strokes

posted on Jun 27 by Amanda in the Disability News, Health, Healthcare, Paralysis Cures, Technology category

Many patients recovering from strokes need help improving hand and arm movement, and it has been shown that virtual video games like Wii may help patients as part of an overall rehabilitation program that utilizes technology. Now according to another study, a new generation of computer games may also help stroke patients recover mobility as well.

Between 80-90% of stroke patients still have problems with hand and arm movement six months after their stroke. While many rehabilitation centers do have robot-aided movement recovery technologies, only recently have these been paired with computer simulations. This new combined rehabilitation method for stroke victims was recently tested by New Jersey doctors, who developed and tested computer simulations on stroke patients and published their results in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, a BioMed Central open access journal.

What makes this study different from other rehabilitation studies is that, while many stroke rehabilitation programs focus on regaining arm movement and hand movement with separate therapies, the new technology-aided methods introduced by this study treat hand and arm movement as one therapy using computer games. Researchers had stroke victims use two games called Hummingbird Hunt and Virtual Piano to help patients recover fine motor skills like finger motion and precision in hand grip, while other games like Hammer Task and Plasma Pong were used to help improve hand and arm coordination.

Study patients used the computer games for between two and three hours each day for up to eight days. After the trial period, patients showed higher coordination of their affected hands and arms. Improvements were seen in reaching, smoothness of movement, finger control and improve times on test tasks. The control group with normal hand and arm function showed no improvement, as did the uninjured arm of stroke patients.

One of the doctors involved in the study, Dr. Alma Merians, states that, “Patients who played these games showed an average improvement in their standard clinical scores of 20-22% over the eight days. These results show that computer games could be an important tool in the recovery of paralyzed limbs after stroke.”

Sources:
sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110515201320.htm
wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/16/stroke-victims-video-games
bmedreport.com/archives/28285
jneuroengrehab.com/content/8/1/27

Video source:
wkyc.com/news/article/208515/7/Video-games-can-help-stroke-victims