Article: Virtual reality archery is “Braille” for orientation of blind people
Source: Italian Institute of Technology (Italy)
Published: January 4, 2022
Researchers
at the Italian Institute of Technology developed a virtual reality game
to better understand how blind people move and orient themselves in
space. Contrary to popular belief, blind people do not necessarily possess super-hearing, but instead depend on context, according to research conducted by the authors previously. In technical terms, goal-directed orientation movements in the horizontal plane during locomotion require a high degree of head-trunk coordination, which is acquired in childhood. Since early visual loss is accompanied by motor deficits, the investigators were curious about how the effect on head-trunk coordination for horizontal rotations, which had not been previously explored. In the present study involving a head-pointing task with sounds delivered in acoustic virtual reality, they report that congenital
blind people struggle at coordinating head and trunk to reorient towards
new targets, but still rely on their body as their main source of information via vestibular, proprioceptive and motor cues. This contrasts with blindfolded sighted people, who prefer relying on the environmental sounds. The authors state that further clarification is needed to assess the impact of blindness-related head-trunk coordination deficit on daily life activities such as steering or reaching toward targets placed sideways. Although an assessment tool at this point, they hope to develop a
rehabilitation game that could help blind people become more
independent, like braille does for reading and writing. My rating of this study:
⭐Esposito D, Bollini A, and Gori M
. "Early Blindness Limits the Head-Trunk Coordination Development for Horizontal Reorientation."
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 16 July 2021.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.699312
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