Combined Language and Motor Therapy for Brain Injury Patients

This paper describes a pilot multidisciplinary computer-based therapy tool for motor and language rehabilitation following brain injury. The functional connectivity and structural proximity of elements of the language and motor systems result in frequent comorbidity post brain injury. Although rehabilitation services are becoming increasingly multidisciplinary and "integrated", treatment for language and motor functions often occurs in isolation. Thus, behavioural therapies which promote neural reorganisation and neuronal regrowth do not reflect the high intersystem connectivity of the neurologically intact brain. As such, there is a pressing need for rehabilitation tools which better reflect and target the impaired cognitive networks. This project uses the Kinect sensor to develop an integrated motor and language rehabilitation therapy tool, capable of providing cost-effective, long-term, high dosage rehabilitation in the home setting.

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