Virtual Action Planning in Stroke: a Control Rehabilitation Study

The objective of this study is firstly to examine the effectiveness of using virtual reality-based training VAP-S on the ability to run errands in a real supermarket in individuals with stroke. Virtual environment provide useful way to explore planning and secondly to examine the effectiveness of using VR in the assessment of cognitive planning for patients. A virtual supermarket was designed in which participants carried out a task close to daily activities: a test of shopping list. Of the 70 subjects (7 centres), 35 randomly allocated to the control group, and the other 35 subjects randomly allocated to the experimental group. Subjects will be evaluated by a therapist who will not be involved in the training program and did not know about the subject's group assignment.

Statistical analysis : We will calculate descriptive statistics for the clinical characteristics of each group. We will use to compare the baseline demographic characteristics, the pretraining and posttraining variables between groups, independent-samples t-tests for means and Chi-square tests for frequencies. A significance level of 0.05 is set for all analyses.

Inclusion criteria

• Adults
• 1 to 18 months after stroke
• Without dementia or previous clinical stroke
• With executive impairment (Grefex battery)
• Barthel score equal or more than 40
• With cognitive disability leading to specific rehabilitation
• Given and informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• dementia or severe psychiatric disease
• epilepsy
• disorder of consciousness
• visual agnosia
• severe visual impairment