NCT04270305

Study of Navigation Skills in Cerebral Palsy for Assessment and Rehabilitation in Immersive Virtual Reality

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 48 (actual)
• Sponsor: IRCCS Eugenio Medea · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 8 Years – 14 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Spatial navigation refers to the ability to maintain a sense of direction/location while moving around the environment so to find one's way. It includes abilities such as orienting in complex environments,perceiving distance and planning routes to distant locations as well as mentally representing the reciprocal relations of landmarks in space (Lawton, 2010; Wolbers \& Hegarty 2010. Spatial navigation involves the precision in encoding multisensorial (visual, vestibular, proprioceptive)experiences, as well as to form mental representations to be used to guide behavior (Bianchini et al.,2014). Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by movement and posture disorders causing activity limitation. Impairment in many other functions is common in CP including visual spatial competences and spatial organization. In this study the investigators meant to explore the navigation and learning strategies in children with CP.

Conditions

• Cerebral Palsy

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Orientation	In the first group CP patients undergo a four week training with once daily sessions lasting 30 minutes. The treatment includes exercises to improve navigation competences and orientation. During walk in VR environment with labyrinths of increasing complexity. Exercises include abilities such as orienting in complex environments, perceiving distance and planning routes to distant locations. The presence of landmarks has been included in some exercises to facilitate allocentric orientation strategies.
OTHER	walking	In the second group CP patients undergo a four week training with once daily sessions lasting 30 minutes. The treatment includes exercises to improve walking and balance abilities. Using engaging VR environments (e.g. transfer your load from the left to the right side to avoid obstacles while skiing; shoot balls at targets inside an area; walk in a forest as fast as possible; hit as many elves as possible by squatting, and so on). No exercises for orientation are included in this group.

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-02-09
• Primary completion: 2021-07-31
• Completion: 2021-07-31
• First posted: 2020-02-17
• Last updated: 2022-08-05

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Italy