Virtual reality games improved the ability of stroke survivors to walk and also appear to have improved function in the damaged part of the brain, researchers report.
It was a small study, including just 10 people who had suffered strokes more than a year earlier.
But the findings indicate that computerized game-playing could have a role in stroke rehabilitation programs, said lead study author Sung H. You, assistant professor of physical therapy at Hampton University, in Hampton, Va.
The findings are published in the May 13 rapid access issue of the journal Stroke.
These games create a virtual reality scene and superimpose the patient's life-size body into the scene.
"If a patient likes soccer, we use a soccer game.
They stand in front of a big-screen television set, and a camera captures their motion.
Five of them received the computer-assisted training one hour a day, five days a week for a month, while the others did not.
"We hope to work on a larger scale, perhaps in patients' homes," You said.
The new study offers more proof that computerized training can help stroke patients recover function, said Grigore C. Burdea, professor of computer engineering and director of the Human-Machines Interface Laboratory at Rutgers University, who has done similar work.
"Our laboratory developed prototype devices rather than using a commercial system," Burdea said.
Working with physicians at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Burdea's group first added virtual reality training to conventional stroke rehabilitation therapy in 2002.
"There is hope for recovery, even though under current medical arrangements therapy stops a few months after a stroke.
Similar results have been reported in small-scale trials at several institutions, Burdea said.