Virtual reality rehabilitation clinic Engage VR joins with University of Newcastle in a research project into neurological conditions

Craig Hewat, managing director of the Engage VR clinic, said clients were experiencing "clinical changes in areas that we weren't expecting".

"So perhaps something else is happening. That's what we want to eventually find out," Mr Hewat said.

"A lot of our clients talk about having more energy after doing VR, like it's woken up their brain.

"In particular we saw some speech improvements in our Parkinson's clients and we weren't targeting this therapy."

This led the University of Newcastle to conduct a small trial with the Parkinson's clients. And from that, a larger trial was born.

This new trial will examine virtual reality's capacity to help treat neurological conditions.

Therapists at Engage VR have been using virtual reality as a therapy tool in rehabilitation for two years. The research seeks to understand its influence in this area.

"The potential is endless," Mr Hewat said.

Once the domain of gaming consoles, virtual reality has progressed to other areas of life such as healthcare.

Dr Jodie Marquez, senior lecturer in physiotherapy, said the "application of virtual reality has evolved over the past 20 years".

"Rehabilitation training incorporating VR is becoming more commonplace in clinical settings," Dr Marquez said.

It had been used for people with neurological conditions to "improve upper limb and lower limb function, gait, cognition, perception and functional tasks".

Mr Hewat said the study would "look at the impact of using VR on treatment outcomes for a range of neurological conditions", including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, spinal cord injury, stroke and traumatic brain injury.

The technology is incorporated into the treatment program to boost engagement, task repetition and functionality.

Plus, it makes rehab fun.

"We have had some exceptional clinical results," Mr Hewat said.

This includes improvements in quality of life.

"The clients report a distinct difference using VR, compared with traditional therapy," he said.

"And they love it. If you are going to do rehab, it may as well be beneficial and fun."

He said data collected as part of normal clinical practices at Engage VR was showing "some real changes to specific activities/tasks, as well as functional gains".

Mr Hewat's clinic initially used virtual reality for neurological conditions to "improve engagement in rehab exercises".

"Typically these clients need to complete a lot of repetition. Poor compliance due to boredom can affect their improvement."

He found that clients were not responding or making gains with traditional approaches.

"Some had plateaued and were looking for something new and different."

He said there was "emerging evidence highlighting the effect of VR on neurological conditions due to the concept of neuroplasticity".

Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of the brain to rewire itself in response to learning and experience.

The neuroplasticity concept can also be used to help patients recover from injury by creating new neural pathways in the brain.

"If we can get a stroke client riding a bike through the French countryside in VR, their brain believes this is what they are physically doing," he said.

"The concept of neuroplasticity is that the brain will adapt to enable the body to achieve this task."

The research aims to determine the amount and intensity of virtual reality needed.

It will pinpoint which VR tasks work best for specific medical conditions.

"We are collecting preliminary data from consenting clients now," Mr Hewat said.

"We see this program of research as ongoing."

Engage VR will collect and collate the data, while researchers at the universities of Newcastle and Central Queensland will analyse it.

"We anticipate that the outcomes of the preliminary research will lead to more specific research directions," Mr Hewat said.

"That's when we will go for some external funding to support the research."

Dr Marquez said the features of the technology aligned with "our current understanding of brain recovery and training principles".

"That is, high intensity and task-specific activity that is repetitive, meaningful and challenging," she said.

These were considered the main aspects of rehabilitation that enable "functional recovery".

She said virtual reality could help patients meet these requirements, as it acted as an incentive to do the treatment.

The enjoyment gained from using the technology helped patients with motivation and focusing on goals.

She said there had been numerous clinical research trials conducted to investigate the effects of VR therapy.

"Yet beneficial effects and the size of the benefit are not consistently reported in the literature," she said.

The research will include a systematic review of the academic literature. Dr Marquez said a recent review of the literature concluded that VR was "a promising new rehabilitation tool".

However, it was unclear what characteristics of the technology were most important.

The study will examine the effects of the intensity and dosage of virtual reality training.

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