Sensory Training and Evaluation for Parkinson's Disease

A prototype of the STEP Software can be tested with a live demo and viewed with a video demo. This software will be presented April 2015 at the 7th International IEEE EMBS Neural Engineering Conference in Montpelier, France and has been described in the preprint Web-Enabled Software for Clinical Telegaming Evaluation of Multisensory Integration and Response to Auditory and Visual Stimuli co-authored by Linda Xu, Stephan Loh, and Carl Taswell.

Abstract: Clinical telegaming integrates telecare and videogaming to enable a more convenient and enjoyable experience for patients when providers diagnose, monitor, and treat a variety of health problems via web-enabled telecommunications. In recent years, clinical telegaming systems have been applied to physical therapy and rehabilitation, evaluation of mental health, and prevention and management of obesity and diabetes. Parkinson's disease (PD) is suitable for development of new clinical telegaming applications because PD patients are known to experience motor symptoms that can be improved by physical therapy. Recent research suggests that sensory processing deficits may also play an important role in these motor impairments because successful motor function requires multisensory integration. In this paper, we describe a new web-enabled software system that uses clinical telegaming to evaluate and improve multisensory integration ability in users. This software has the potential to be used in diagnostic and therapeutic telegaming for PD patients.