Effectiveness of Virtual Reality Therapy in Patients with Neurological Disorders

Abstract

Background: Recent advancements in Virtual Reality (VR) provide new tools for the development of novel and promising applications for rehabilitation in various neurological disorders. The purpose of this review is to the emerging VR applications developed for the evaluation and treatment of patients with neurological diseases and discussing the impact of novel VR tasks that encourage and facilitate the patient’s empowerment and involvement in the rehabilitation process. Overall, this review explains the evolution of use of the VR in both adults and paediatric neurological conditions such as stroke, spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s, Traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, Guillian barre syndrome, autism and muscular dystrophy.

Methodology: The review search retrieved 192 citations which represented 146 studies. A total of 89 studies were included in the literature review and among them 56 studies for adult’s population and 33 studies for paediatrics’ population.Two high-quality databases (Pub Med and Web of Science) were used to perform the search. Keywords used for each separate string were (“virtual reality” OR “virtual”) AND (“neurorehabilitation” OR “rehabilitation” AND (“balance and gait disability” OR “upper extremity functions” OR “cognitive impairments” OR “neuropathic pain”) and were search through Title/Abstract and Topic for each database, respectively, over the last twenty-five years (2003–2020).

Result: Most of the studies reveal positive results suggesting that VR is a feasible and effective tool in the treatment of neurological disorders. In addition, the development of VR technologies in recent years has resulted in more accessible and affordable solutions that can still provide promising results.

Conclusion: VR and interactive devices resulted in the development of holistic, portable, accessible, and usable systems for certain neurological disease interventions. It is expected that emerging VR technologies and tools will further facilitate the development of state of the art applications in the future, exerting a significant impact on the well being of the patient.