Development of a Virtual Reality System That Generates Prism Adaptation for Multiple Motor Units

Abstract

Conventionally, the adaptive body area for prism adaptation (PA) has been limited to the visible range of prism glasses, especially the unilateral upper limbs. In this study, we developed a virtual reality system that extends PA’s adaptive body range. This system sets the visible area of the target and introduces a symbolic representation of the body position to realize a head position adaptation task. As a result, the head position adaptation task generates PA not to individual body parts but to a collection of multiple motor units, such as the upper trunk. Furthermore, experimental results in healthy subjects showed that the head position adaptation task could generate PA in the entire upper trunk and displace it to the left anteriorly. Therefore, the head position adaptation task is expected to be effective for the postural correction of USN patients with upper trunk deviated to the right posteriorly. Moreover, the developed system has potential applications in a wide range of fields, such as detecting cerebellar disorders.