A Repertoire of Virtual-Reality, Occupational Therapy Exercises for Motor Rehabilitation Based on Action Observation

Emilia Scalona, Doriana De Marco, Maria Chiara Bazzini, Arturo Nuara, Adolfo Zilli, Elisa Taglione, Fabrizio Pasqualetti, Generoso Della Polla, Nicola Francesco Lopomo, Maddalena Fabbri-Destro and Pietro Avanzini
Additional contact information
Emilia Scalona: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy
Doriana De Marco: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy
Maria Chiara Bazzini: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy
Arturo Nuara: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy
Adolfo Zilli: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy
Elisa Taglione: Centro di Riabilitazione Motoria, INAIL, 56048 Volterra, Italy
Fabrizio Pasqualetti: Centro di Riabilitazione Motoria, INAIL, 56048 Volterra, Italy
Generoso Della Polla: Centro di Riabilitazione Motoria, INAIL, 56048 Volterra, Italy
Nicola Francesco Lopomo: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy
Maddalena Fabbri-Destro: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy
Pietro Avanzini: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Neuroscienze, 43125 Parma, Italy

Data, 2022, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: There is a growing interest in action observation treatment (AOT), i.e., a rehabilitative procedure combining action observation, motor imagery, and action execution to promote the recovery, maintenance, and acquisition of motor abilities. AOT studies employed basic upper limb gestures as stimuli, but—in principle—the AOT approach can be effectively extended to more complex actions like occupational gestures. Here, we present a repertoire of virtual-reality (VR) stimuli depicting occupational therapy exercises intended for AOT, potentially suitable for occupational safety and injury prevention. We animated a humanoid avatar by fitting the kinematics recorded by a healthy subject performing the exercises. All the stimuli are available via a custom-made graphical user interface, which allows the user to adjust several visualization parameters like the viewpoint, the number of repetitions, and the observed movement’s speed. Beyond providing clinicians with a set of VR stimuli promoting via AOT the recovery of goal-oriented, occupational gestures, such a repertoire could extend the use of AOT to the field of occupational safety and injury prevention.

Keywords: action observation treatment; upper limb; kinematics; Unity 3D; visual perspective; occupational safety; injury prevention; hand-object manipulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 C80 C81 C82 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/7/1/9/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/7/1/9/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jdataj:v:7:y:2022:i:1:p:9-:d:721937

Access Statistics for this article

Data is currently edited by Ms. Cecilia Yang

More articles in Data from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().