Serious Game Therapy in Neglect Patients

The growing field of new technologies offers new perspectives for neurorehabilitation. Serious games are a promising solution in the rehabilitation of cognitive impairments, and they may be useful in the rehabilitation of unilateral spatial neglect. Investigators developed a rehabilitation program for visual exploration training with a serious game and investigated its efficiency. Twelve patients with unilateral spatial neglect after a right hemispheric stroke were recruited. Six patients assigned to a group received both serious game training and conventional rehabilitation, and after only conventional rehabilitation; and six patients assigned to another group received first conventional rehabilitation and then serious game training and conventional rehabilitation. The investigators compared the two groups after rehabilitation.

Each patient was assigned to a group who received 2 rehabilitations for 3 weeks, 1) both serious game training and a conventional rehabilitation first and then conventional rehabilitation alone (group 1, G1), or 2) a conventional rehabilitation first and then both serious game training and a conventional rehabilitation (group 2, G2).

Each patient received 2 rehabilitations : a serious game training and a conventional rehabilitation first (during 3 weeks) and then conventional rehabilitation alone (during 3 weeks)

Each patient received 2 rehabilitations for 3 weeks: a conventional rehabilitation first (during 3 weeks) and then both serious game training and a conventional rehabilitation (during 3 weeks)

The SG rehabilitation was proposed to be played four times per week for three weeks, for a total of 12 sessions, with 15 min per session (= 60 minutes per week). Conventional rehabilitation comprised five sessions of 45 min of neuropsychological rehabilitation using classical exploration training (= 225 minutes per week).

Behavioral Inattention Test (Wilson et al., 1987) (BIT) including the first part of conventional subtests: star and letter cancellation, line crossing, figure and shape copying, line bisection and representational drawing (total score /146)

CBS for therapist (Bergego et al., 1995) is based on the direct observation of the therapist in ten standardised dailylife situations. The score ranges from 0 to 30 (higher scores indicating more severe neglect).

FIM (Minaire, 1991) is a basic indicator of patient disability. FIM is used to track the changes in the functional ability of a patient during an episode of hospital rehabilitation care.

Inclusion Criteria: Unilateral spatial neglect syndrome Right cerebral lesion Exclusion Criteria: Epilepsia General mental deterioration Psychiatric disorder No prior history of neurological disease