Video game rehabilitation is a process of using common video game consoles and methodology to target and improve physical and mental weaknesses through therapeutic processes. Video games are becoming an integral part of occupational therapy practice in acute, rehabilitation, and community settings. The design for video games in rehabilitation is focused on a number of fundamental principles, such as reward, goals, challenge, and meaningful play. 'Meaningful play' emerges from the relationship between player action and system outcome, apparent to the player through, visual, physical and aural feedback. Platforms that feature motion control, notably the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, Sony's Eye Toy, and virtual reality have all been effective in this field of research. Methodologies have been applied to all age groups, from toddlers to the elderly. It has been used in a variety of cases ranging from stroke rehabilitation, cerebral palsy and other neurological impairments, to tendinitis and multiple sclerosis. Researchers have promoted such technology based on the personalization of gaming systems to patients, allowing for further engagement and interaction. Additionally, gaming consoles have the ability to capture real-time data and provide instant feedback to the patients using the systems. Currently, several researchers have performed case studies to demonstrate the benefits of this technology. Repeat trials and experiments have shown that outcomes are easily replicated among various groups worldwide. Additionally, the outcomes have increased interest in the field, growing experiments beyond simple case studies to experiments with a larger participant base.
History Since the early 1980s, there has been evidence in the literature of commercially available video games used for therapeutic purpose for different patients. The use of virtual feedback has been seen scattered throughout history for quite some time. However, though the feedback was virtual, the performances were not widely virtual until the 1990s. With the early-stage experimentation, not many positive results were found causing some doubt of the systems. Some even found that too much virtual feedback increased poor performance outside of the controlled environment. As virtual reality systems and virtual environments became more accessible and affordable, though, so too did the implementations of and research on them. The use of these systems in positive motor skill development began somewhere in the late 1990s as more researchers realized the benefit of internal, corrective feedback in such environments. Additionally, at the same time, researchers across the world began experimenting with the effect of virtual reality in therapeutic measures for anxiety disorder and phobias. With positive results, such as better motor control and lower anxiety in relation to phobias, coming from these experiments, researchers began looking into virtual reality systems as a form of rehabilitation in the early 2000s, and the research has expanded since. Now, common gaming consoles such as the Wii and Kinect allow researchers to use cheaper, more readily available systems in their labs, as well, opening up new possibilities for games and rehabilitation options. Case studies and use of systems in actual therapy offices have suggested that this field has the potential to impact therapy outside the lab setting, as well, making it a rapidly growing field of interest. Currently, several reviews of the findings have also suggested positive effects of this form of rehabilitation, garnering support for this field as well. Several studies have been conducted regarding the potential of applying virtual reality to different therapies. A systematic literature review published in 2012 analyzed 963 publications regarding virtual reality and rehabilitation from 1996 and 2010. Investigators found an increasing number of research done in the field yearly, from less than 10 articles per year in 1997 to more than 40 in 2010. More than the number of articles analyzed, this literature review found important issues to be addressed in future studies: i) the need to consider a greater number of participants in each study to best represent the target populations; ii) to improve the use of control groups; iii) to enhance the uniformity of the tests applied and iv) to execute more follow-up studies in the field. These aspects would allow the comparison among different studies and the conceptualization of the results from different studies. Lastly, this investigation cites the importance of research in the field of virtual reality and rehabilitation, once the potential of this technology is recognized to support the neural and cognitive rehabilitation of different patients.
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