Praxis: Post Brain Injury VR-Based Rehabilitation

Target Audience: General Audience

Company: BlueHalo

Description: The Praxis games are fast-action VR shooter games used in rehabilitation and assessment after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). The games induce the same head and body movements as traditional rehabilitation exercises. The games take place in an operationally relevant context and add critical cognitive tasks. The Praxis system captures and analyzes patient performance and symptom data to inform return-to-duty decisions.

Skills and Ideas Taught: Coordination of head and body movement, balance, vestibular ocular motor control training and gaze stabilization, to shoot targets. Added cognitive complexity involves memory, spatial reasoning, and discrimination skills.

Goals: All three Praxis games require cognitive and physical performance to succeed. The game is unique in providing a multisensory experience that help patients conduct a combination of cognitive tasks with physical activities that rehabilitate the patient’s vestibular ocular system and situates them in operationally relevant decision making scenarios.

– In the Stroop Target Shoot game, patients memorize the position of colored drones. They are given visual cues (requiring head and eye coordination) and must shoot the corresponding drone (which is no longer colored).

– In the Directionality game, patients memorize directional coordinates. They are given directional cues and must shoot the enemies in the corresponding directions.

– In the Barricade Wave Defense game, patients must move and conduct maneuvers that challenge their vestibular ocular motor system to look through openings in a barricade to shoot hostile (not friendly) targets.

Primary Audience: Patients receiving rehabilitation therapy for mTBI.

Assessment Approach: Head and eye tracking, shot accuracy, reaction time.

Game Engine: Unity

Operating System: Windows 11 / Vive Focus 3 / Custom 3D Printed Gun