Multimedia Simulation for Brain Injury Rehabilitation

Each year over 8 million people sustain head injuries. Of those who survive, approximately80,000 have long-lasting cognitive, physical, emotional and behavioral disabilities which requirelong-term rehabilitation services; and a large portion of these survivors are not able to successfullyreintegrate into their work and life situations. Survivors of brain injury have serious learning and memorydeficits, as well as problems dealing with stress, modulating emotions, and interacting appropriately withothers. The literature indicates that no ecologically valid training methods exists to deal with theseproblems. Thus, there is a need for effective methods to help retrain brain-injured individuals in socialdiscourse and communication skills; methods which allow these individuals to relearn practical, real lifetransactions at their own pace in a low-risk clinical setting. In Phase I, we will produce and evaluate aprototype multimedia simulation of a real life scenario which can be used by social rehabilitationtherapists in social discourse retraining for brain-injured clients. Additional simulations will be producedin Phase II for a longitudinal study of outcome effectiveness. The ultimate goal is a therapeuticallyeffective series of interactive videodisc simulations of distribute to hospitals rehabilitation center andtherapists in private practice.