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kallistini t1_j9cp71v wrote

Reply to comment by m-s-c-s in Stroke survivor moves her hand for first time in a decade after groundbreaking treatment by TheTelegraph

Yup. Being able to activate and control the residual muscles is super useful, especially for advanced prosthetics. A lot of people lose the ability because they have no other reason to use those neural pathways and muscles before they’re fitted for prosthetics, but also because there’s no (or limited) biofeedback. There’s some research into using VR to provide visual feedback to help people, but it requires a baseline level of control that some people simply don’t have without neural stimulation like this. The lack of feedback and control is also one of the proposed mechanisms of phantom limb pain

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upsidedownbackwards t1_j9dk4ug wrote

Only vaguely in the same realm but I was lucky enough to be able to use VR while in the hospital for a month waiting for spine surgery and it was such a great break from life. My breathing and heartrate would be much better while using it and it would get me away from my real body that was covered in wires/tubes. It was the strongest my SO2 levels could get (I got pneumonia from not being able to walk for so long).

REALLY hope that VR becomes a thing for people in the hospital and with limited mobility.

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kallistini t1_j9e8h62 wrote

I know a couple people that are doing it for stroke rehab with a mobile unit about the size of a shoe (plus VR headset and laptop). When I was involved in the field, we did visit a few spinal cord injury clinics, but we had a devil of a time getting usable EMG signals from the patients we worked with. Maybe it was just bad luck, but we couldn’t get any more funding for that project without promising preliminary data.

I’m also really excited for the tech to move forward. Everyone we worked with seemed to genuinely have fun and get lost in the game/training they were doing.

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whichwitch9 t1_j9dizg6 wrote

....

I want to be mature about this but I can't help the part of me that's like "We're so close to automail"

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