The effect of virtual reality prism adaptation on visuospatial neglect in stroke patients

Objective To investigate the effects of virtual reality prism adaptation on visuospatial neglect in stroke patients.Methods Thirty stroke patients with visuospatial neglect were studied.The subjects were divided into atreatment group and a control group.The subjects in the treatment group were treated with virtual reality prism adaptation and routine rehabilitation interventions for 2 weeks,while those in the control group were treated with routine rehabilitation interventions only.All the patients performed a battery of spatial attention tests including line bisection,letter cancellation,clock drawing and the Attention Network Test at the beginning and after 2 weeks of treatment.Results The virtual reality prism adaptation training had significant positive effects on all the measures of visuospatial neglect.Pair-wise comparisons confirmed significant differences between the treatment and control groups after 2 weeks of treatment with regard to all of the measures.Conclusions Virtual reality prism adaptation treatzment combined with routine rehabilitation can be more effective than conventional measures alone in improving the visuospatial performance of stroke survivors. Key words: Stroke ;  Visuospatial neglect;  Virtual reality ;  Prism adaptation