VR-Mirror:: A virtual reality system for mental practice in post-stroke rehabilitation

Developments in basic neurological research and techniques used to train professional athletes suggest that one way of facilitating this learning process of motor schemas is through the use of motor imagery, a training technique in which the procedure required to per-form a task is mentally rehearsed in absence of actual physical movement. Clinical studies have shown that rehabilitation of hemiplegic and hemiparetic patients can be improved by integrating physical and mental practice. In this paper, we describe an advanced virtual reality workbench, the VR- Mirror, that it has been designed to support stroke patients with upper-limb hemiplegia in generating motor images. The development of this prototype has been supported by the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) - IST programme (Project I-Leaming, IST 2001-38861).