Virtual Reality Applications in Neurorehabilitation

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to introduce a Special Issue of Brain Science dedicated to basic neuroscience and clinical research about the use of virtual reality applications in neurorehabilitation.

In recent times, technological systems applied to neurorehabilitation have experienced a remarkable evolution. In particular, as virtual reality technology has become more affordable and popular among the population, it has also gained popularity as a tool for diagnosis, treatment, and even education in the fields of neuroscience and neurorehabilitation.

Virtual reality allows the patient to be introduced into a virtual environment resembling the real world, allowing the user to behave in such scenarios as they usually do in real life. One of the main advantages of virtual environments is that they can be customized by designing tasks that fit the individual’s cognitive and physical capabilities, increasing the ecological validity of interventions and experimental paradigms. Moreover, it is acknowledged that virtual reality helps therapists to motivate patients to stay engaged in rehabilitation procedures.

Virtual reality offers the possibility of being combined with a wide range of sensors such as inertial measurement units (IMUs), electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to track progress in patients’ performance, but also their impacts on physiological and neurobiological mechanisms. Timely feedback provides objective information to therapists about the efficacy of the intervention and permits neuroscientists to investigate how the nervous system responds to the therapy. This facilitates practitioners and researchers to develop new interventions, correct possible mistakes, and understand how the nervous system responds to the therapy.

Virtual reality-based telerehabilitation is another area of active research. Therapists prescribe exercise routines via the web which are performed by patients from the comfort of their homes.

Nevertheless, despite the growing evidence regarding the positive effects of VR in rehabilitation, there are still some concerns regarding its acceptability and efficacy in some individuals and pathologies. It is therefore essential that researchers and practitioners comprehensively address which factors of virtual reality-based rehabilitation enhance its therapeutic efficacy, how they can be combined with different strategies to get the best protocol for each case, and which are the physiological, neurobiological, and psychological mechanisms underpinning the results.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of evidence from clinical and basic research perspectives about the use of virtual reality applications in neurorehabilitation. A non-exhaustive list of potential papers may include studies on clinical populations, basic neuroscience research, or teaching approaches for healthcare students.

With regard to the format of papers, we will consider research articles, communications, opinion/perspective articles, and review articles (narrative review, systematic review, and meta-analysis).

Prof. Dr. Augusto Fusco
Dr. Francisco Nieto-Escamez
Dr. Esteban Obrero-Gaitán
Guest Editors

Dr. Irene Cortés Pérez
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• neurorehabilitation
• virtual reality
• videogames
• exergames
• telerehabilitation
• central nervous system diseases
• peripheral nervous system diseases
• spinal cord injury
• artificial intelligence
• neuroimage
• neuroanatomy
• neurophysiology
• physiotherapy
• occupational therapy
• neuropsychology
• interdisciplinary approach