Things around you don’t have to be real for your brain body connection to work. In fact, the brain body connection might be able to handle more complex movements in a virtual reality than in everyday familiar situations.
One of the most fascinating topics in Your Body Has a Mind of Its Own involves virtual reality. VR pioneer Jaron Lanier describes learning how to move agilely in a kind of lobster suit that gave his arms several more joints than they have in “real” life.
Virtual reality and related brain body computer interfaces are trickling out of the lab into the real world. One beneficial application is therapy for those whose brain body connections have become somehow disabled. Thanks to the brain’s amazing capacity for plasticity, many disabled people can improve their functioning through learning. And virtual reality tools might accelerate that learning.
And that’s exactly what’s happening at Portsmouth University. There, stroke recovery patients walk thorough virtual landscapes while on an ordinary treadmill.
Using a variety of different settings, including urban and woodland landscapes, the device creates a virtual world for the patient to “walk” through on the treadmill. This immersion also acts as a distraction, and early research has shown patients using it have a decreased perception of pain.
Wendy Powell, the researcher at Portsmouth University who developed the software, said: “The virtual system encourages patients to walk more quickly and for longer, almost without them realising it.
It’s a neat and beneficial sort of trick to get the brain body connection reestablished. And that’s a real benefit from a virtual technology.
Technorati Tags:
brain body, sensory motor learning