According to existing data, there are more than 1.5 million of Americans sustaining a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) each Year. Balance disorders represent one of the main regular problems that patients have to deal with, and thus everyday. Rehabilitation programs do exist but they are dependable of the clinician or physiotherapist and they do not take in account the multimodal aspects of balance control. This proposal will be aimed to provide a novel and functional multimodal biofeedback device to train or retrain patients with mild TBI to control their balance. The biofeedbacks will be based on the Visual, proprioceptive and tactile/haptic information. This combination will allow the control of the level of information given to the patient as well as the customization to his deficit. We will primarly focus on the haptic mode, e.d. on the force feedback provided to the patientÂ’s hand, in order to be able to conduct a neurosensorimotor retraining of the patient through a robotic device driven by the patientÂ’s balance.
Keywords: Balance, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Rehabilitation, Biofeedback, Multisensory Integration, Neuroplasticity, Robotic Arm
