title: Virtual reality-based prospective memory training program for people with acquired brain injury.
abstract: Acquired brain injuries (ABI) may display cognitive impairments and lead to long-term disabilities including prospective memory (PM) failure. Prospective memory serves to remember to execute an intended action in the future. PM problems would be a challenge to an ABI patient's successful community reintegration. While retrospective memory (RM) has been extensively studied, treatment programs for prospective memory are rarely reported. The development of a treatment program for PM, which is considered timely, can be cost-effective and appropriate to the patient's environment. A 12-session virtual reality (VR)-based cognitive rehabilitation program was developed using everyday PM activities as training content. 37 subjects were recruited to participate in a pretest-posttest control experimental study to evaluate its treatment effectiveness. Results suggest that significantly better changes were seen in both VR-based and real-life PM outcome measures, related cognitive attributes such as frontal lobe functions and semantic fluency. VR-based training may be well accepted by ABI patients as encouraging improvement has been shown. Large-scale studies of a virtual reality-based prospective memory (VRPM) training program are indicated.
authors: Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
authors: Ben C B
authors: BC
authors: Yip
authors: David W K
authors: DW
authors: Man
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014584:User-Computer Interface