Start of funding 01.01.2019

Therapeutic application of virtual reality: development of a training system for patients with cerbral palsy

Prof. Dr. David Franklin
Technische Universität München
Faculty of Sport and Health Science

Prof. Dr. Francisco Valero-Cuevas
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Brain-Body Dynamics Lab



Virtual reality provides a low-cost solution to neurorehabilitation that can be used both in clinics and at home. In this project, we will develop custom interactive games for children who suffer neurological disorders. The goal of this project is to integrate sensorimotor experimental designs within the system in order to examine issues such as motor adaptation, movement abilities, and movement costs and tradeoffs within games that the children can play. In particular we will use these games to examine any sensory effects of cerebral palsy that may also contribute to motor deficits. This system and our experimental results can then be used to provide training for the patients, and treatment optimization in the clinic.

Final report:
This project made it possible for an exchange of visits between TUM and the University of Southern California. During these visits we developed three major virtual reality environments to study training during interactive tasks. Initial experiments on healthy individuals provided promising results. Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic limited any possibility to study this with individuals with cerebral palsy but the techniques can be extended and developed in future work. However, the results of this work highlighted the key promise of VR for interactive games that provide rehabilitation training and can be individually tuned to any specific requirements of the patient. The funding of BaCaTeC allowed the establishment of strong connections for future collaboration on this and other studies.