Centralight

Harold Franks reaches into the air with his left hand. On the television, there is an interactive video game that he is playing. Franks, who has a traumatic brain injury, pops the virtual bubble – the game's target – that's in the upper left-hand corner. In the game, popping the bubbles is representative of reaching for an item – like grabbing something from the kitchen cupboard. "The virtual world is both motivating and safe," says Ksenia Ustinova, a physical therapy assistant professor. "Missing a bubble is not a big problem, but trying to grab something from the shelf and knocking it over could be." Ustinova, along with her CMU team – which consists of faculty, staff and students from CMU's physical therapy, computer science, information technology and psychology departments – is taking the lead on a $390,000 grant supported by the U.S. Department of Defense to design virtual reality gaming therapy that will help soldiers and other individuals rehabilitate from traumatic brain injuries. The CMU team uses equipment such as an 82-inch 3-D television, a laptop computer and a motion capture system to create a virtual environment for research subject participants. The virtual reality world they created allows people with TBI to perform tasks they otherwise would not be able to accomplish. "Virtual reality is a relatively new form of rehabilitation, and we are designing a series of immersive 3-D games to help soldiers work on both motor and cognitive abilities," says Ustinova. "We are very pleased to be working with the Department of Defense on this important initiative." A National Service By doing this activity repetitively in a virtual sense, Ustinova says people with TBI naturally retrain and recondition muscles to coordinate similarly to how they did before their injuries. CMU team develops federally funded virtual reality therapy BY SARAH CHUBY, '03, M.A. '11 1818 centralight summer '11

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