Virtual Reality in Rehabilitation of Executive Functions in Children With Mild or Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury

Summary

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) causes lifelong disability. Children with TBI often have difficulties in attention regulation and executive functions affecting their daily living. Need for rehabilitation is often long-lasting and there is an increasing demand for timely, cost-effective, and feasible rehabilitation methods, where the training is targeted to support daily life functional capacity. The use of Virtual Reality (VR) in the rehabilitation of children with attention and executive function deficits offers opportunities to practice skills required in everyday life in environments emulating real-life situations.

The aim of this research project is to develop a novel effective VR rehabilitation method for children with deficits in attention, activity control, and executive functions by using a virtual environment that corresponds to typical everyday life. In this randomized control study, VR glasses are used to present the tasks, and the levels of difficulty are adjusted according to the child's progress.

The researchers expect that; 1) Intensive training improves the attention regulation, activity control skills, and executive functions of the children in the intervention group 2)Training of executive skills with motivating tasks in a virtual environment that is built to meet challenging everyday situations transfers to the child's everyday life, 3)The duration of the training effect does not depend on the success of the VR training itself, but on how well the child adopts new strategies that make everyday life easier and how the parent is able to support the child's positive behaviour in everyday life.

Conditions

• Traumatic Brain Injury

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Parental Guidance

Parents get guidance for children's positive behaviour support by using parts of Self-Help Program on the MentalHub.fi (in Finnish: Mielenterveystalo.fi) website regarding children's challenging behaviour (in Finnish: Lasten haastavan käytöksen omahoito-ohjelma).

BEHAVIORAL

Virtual Reality Game

Virtual reality game for rehabilitation of attention, activity control and executive functions by using the virtual environment that corresponds to the typical everyday situations at home.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Oulu

  collaborator OTHER

• Aalto University

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Helsinki

  collaborator OTHER

• Helsinki University Central Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• Merja Nikula

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Johanna Uusimaa, MD, PhD · Oulu University Hospital

• Merja Nikula, M.Psych. · Oulu University Hospital

• Mirjami Mäntymaa, MD, PhD · Oulu University Hospital

• Juha Salmitaival, PhD · Aalto University, Finland

• Elias Ollikainen, B.M. · University of Oulu, Finland

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

8 Years

Max Age

12 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2024-01-19

Primary Completion

2026-12-31

Completion

2026-12-31

Countries

• Finland

Study Locations