Active clinical trials for "Perceptual Disorders"

The aim of this study is to assess the effect of the drug rotigotine on the syndrome of hemispatial neglect and motor deficits following strokes affecting the right hemisphere of the brain.

Hemispatial neglect is a disorder where the patient has difficulty attending to objects and information in the left side of space, which occurs following strokes to the right side of the brain. This project is designed to help us understand how optokinetic stimulation treats the symptoms of hemispatial neglect.

'Unilateral neglect' is a disorder that occurs regularly after stroke. It is caused by right- as well as left-sided brain lesions, but more often by right-sided lesions. Patients with this disorder neglect the contralesional side of space and/or their body. Their body axis is often shifted ipsilesionally. A specific disorder that can appear in neglect patients is 'contraversive pushing': a postural deviation to the neglected side because the patient pushes himself away from the ipsi- to the contralesional side. One of the most promising neglect interventions is prism adaptation (PA): inducing an optical shift of the visual field by means of prism glasses. This results in a modulation of brain areas involved in neglect and in an improvement of the neglect symptoms and postural deviation. Research questions: Which period is best suited to maximize therapeutic effects? In this respect the effects of early and delayed PA will be compared, regarding neglect-, postural and cerebral measures. Which factors lead to a less favorable treatment outcome or to therapy resistance for PA? Will the impact of PA be larger if postural factors are taken into account in the prism therapy?

This project is designed to test a lightweight, portable, computerized pair of glasses that will help reduce some of the cognitive deficits seen in patients who have suffered damage to their right cerebral hemisphere.

There is a lack of effective rehabilitation methods for visio-spatial neglect (VSN). By using virtual technology, a new method (virtual reality, VR method) has been created which focuses on stimulating attention networks: top down scanning training in a 3D game, combined with intense visual, audio and tactile bottom-up stimulation, also including visuo-motor training. Objective. To evaluate clinical and functional improvement in stroke patients with VSN, as well as before and after training with the new VR method Method:- An intense visio spatial scanning training, enhanced by directed visual, audio and tactile stimulation cues and feedback, also including visio-motor activation was designed in a VR game. The in-house developed software was based on the Tetris game. The VR method consists of an interactive 3D environment: a desktop computer, a monitor, 3D glasses and a force feedback interface. 15 patients with chronic (>6 months) visio spatial neglect was included due to right-sided ischemia. A VR neglect test battery including a Posner task were repeated three times during a 5 weeks baseline before the training started (to establish the chronic state) and again after 15 hours training (3x1 h for 5 weeks). Evaluation of a new method for training attention after stroke causing visio spatial neglect. The method has been designed for home rehabilitation and is well suited for a tele-medicine approach. It was built with standard components and is easy to manufacture at a low cost. The idea is to give access to effective training, to make it available at the stroke unit with the possibility for the patient to loan it it at discharge for home rehabilitation. The concept of an all in one, easy-to-use device for testing, training and outcome evaluation should be beneficial These preliminare results has been promising and indicates that the RehAtt™ method could become an further developed into an effective and stimulating intervention tool that would lower rehabilitation costs and reduce tiresome travelling to hospitals for training.

Spatial neglect represents one of the major cognitive disorders following stroke. Patients patients fail to be aware of objects or people to their left and orientate instead to their right side. Enduring neglect has been found to be a poor prognostic indicator for functional independence following stroke. Despite some promising experimental accounts there are no established treatments for this condition. The aim of this study is to test whether a combined treatment with hemifield eye patching (HEP) and optokinetic stimulation (OKS) can permanently reduce neglect behaviour and improve functional outcome in patients with hemispatial neglect following stroke. The investigators hypothesise that the treatment with HEP and OKS will lead to a greater reduction of neglect scoring in the neglect test battery as well as a greater improvement in functional independence scores as compared to the spontaneous clinical course of the usual-care control group.

Investigators hypothesize, based on anecdotal evidence to date, that active music making interventions conducted on a patient's neglected side will result in improved attention to that side and that this will be measurable within session.

Problems with attention are a common and debilitating consequence of brain injury. Studies show that poor attention is the number one predictor of poor cognitive functioning one year post-injury. This is due to the fact that attention is a necessary component of more complex cognitive functions such as learning & memory, multi-tasking and problem solving. In many cases, individuals may exhibit problems with spatial attention known as 'hemi-spatial neglect syndrome' or simply 'neglect'. Many studies now show that the processing machinery of the brain is plastic and remodeled throughout life by learning and experience, enabling the strengthening of cognitive skills or abilities. Research has shown that brief, daily computerized cognitive training that is sufficiently challenging, goal-directed and adaptive enables intact brain structures to restore balance in attention and compensate for disruptions in cognitive functioning. The study aims to understand how our computer program can affect cognition and attention in those with acquired brain injury.

Hearing loss is a critical health concern in the rapidly aging population, affecting approximately 22 million older individuals in the United States. Yet, only 30% of individuals who would benefit from the use of hearing aids regularly use them. This project aims to improve the benefit of hearing aids for older adults through incorporation of objective neural measures to assess effects of hearing aid algorithms.

This monocentric physiological study will evaluate the neural bases of visual recognition of emotions in stroke patients vs. healthy controls using MRI (functional and structural connectivity) and EEG.