Article

Patient's active cooperation is essential to achieve good outcome in pediatric
rehabilitation. Therefore, virtual environments were developed to enhance robotic
assisted gait training.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate virtual
realities as motivational tools during robotic assisted gait training with
children in the pediatric Lokomat(R). Nine children with different gait disorders
and eight healthy children participated in the study. Muscular effort of the
lower leg was assessed by surface electromyography during a randomly designed
training protocol with virtual realities. Self reported motivation was
investigated with two questionnaires. Comparisons were drawn through repeated
measurement Analysis of Variance and paired-t-tests. The logarithmic transformed
data showed that the electromyographic activity output in both groups was
significantly higher during tasks with virtual realities than during normal
walking conditions. These results support that virtual realities seem to be
efficient motivational tools to increase children's muscular effort in the
pediatric Lokomat(R).
The gaming aspect of virtual realities keeps children highly engaged during repetitive tasks.
- Enfant

Langue : ANGLAIS