Subject

Currently, the risk of falling is assessed in neurorehabilitation clinics for inpatients with the help of standardised assessments, such as the Mini-BEST, Berg Balance Scale (BBS) or Time-up-and-Go (TUG). These tests allow clinicians to assess the objective risk of falling using evidence-based cut-off values.

Previous work has shown that the risk of falling is not solely dependent on physiological factors such as balance, but is strongly influenced by fear of falling and neuropsychological stress (such as dual tasks), among other factors. It is difficult to capture this in test situations. Counting is often used as a dual task, which shows high confounders e.g. in aphasia or educational level. Here, virtual reality (VR) gives us the opportunity to include standardised challenges in a controlled setting, and previous studies have shown that reactions in VR are comparable to reactions in the real world.

Kind of work

You will investigate literature to identidy dual tasks with less confouders that can be translated into VR. Together with the promotors, you will decide on the proper evaluation task, build a prototype in VR and investigate its proper functioning with young healthy controls.

VR games are typically built with Unity and programmed with C#. It is not a requirement to know Unity and C#, but willingness to learn these is important.

Framework of the Thesis

The work will be done at VUB-ETRO, Pleinlaan 9 and VUB-BRRC (Laarbeeklaan 121, 1090 Brussels)

Number of Students

1