Digitally Augmented Neurorehabilitation: Potential for Treatment and Tele-Assessment

Neurorehabilitation, a relatively new domain of clinical intervention has, from its outset, been a rapidly evolving practice, with ongoing advancements in neuroimaging and neuroscience leading to new insights into how the brain grows and recovers from insult. The field of neurorehabilitation is tasked with translating this research into maximally effective treatments. This document addresses how digitally augmented neurorehabilitation, has, and can help meet, these translational needs and clinical imperatives. The first chapter is a review of the literature on the use of avatars in neurorehabilitation and their potential to promote neurological repair and plasticity. The second explores the use of a wearable remote control device for the promotion of enjoyability and intensity in the pediatric neurorehabilitation context. The third chapter pilot tests a video-based assessment methodology and explores the telehealth potential of such an assessment methodology and the final chapter demonstrates how such an assessment methodology can be implemented in pediatric neurorehabilitation in a case study on the treatment of Kernicterus. Collectively these works provide an overview of a selection of digitally augmented neurorehabilitation techniques and tools and preliminary data on how these approaches might be implemented in the field of pediatric neurorehabilitation.