Using Nintendo Wii to improve Cognition in Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

The unfortunate accident of Michael Schumacher had highlighted the fact that Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) can happen unexpectedly. Those who survive have to grapple with physical and cognitive disabilities. Hence it is important to investigate all possible treatment approaches to curtail TBI-related morbidity. This paper explores and evaluates the research evidence pertaining to treatment approaches relating to cognitive remediation and the use of electronic virtual reality. It describes a study whose objective was to identify improvement of cognition among Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients by using Nintendo Wii Sports (NWS) as the intervention tool and to determine if months since injury, virtual reality experience and Glasgow Coma Scale affect Mini Mental State Examination Score after intervention. The experiment can be easily repeated in Neuro Clinics & Wards and Occupational Therapy Centres to test for improvements in cognition in the treatment of other ailments or injuries which have resulted in brain impairments. Thirty (30) Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients with Mild Glasgow Coma scale (GCS) 33.3% (10) and Moderate Glasgow Coma scale (GCS) 66.7% (20) were selected.They were ? 16 years old and the number of months after injury was calculated at the time when GCS test was conducted.This is not to be confused with the work done at UCLA (Babikian et al., 2011) where the studies were on a  sample of children with mild TBI . The number of months was longitudinal time points of the study. The main outcome measures used was the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). It was observed that there was significant improvement in cognitive functions from purposeful use of NWS. Even patients with moderate traumatic brain injury improved MMSE score after intervention. Mean MMSE result increased from 19.8 to 26.4. NWS intervention did show significant improvement in cognition among Traumatic Brain Injury patients with mild or moderate score of GCS independent of VR experience.

Keywords

Nintendo Wii Game Sports (NWS), Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)