A stroke can affect the way the brain processes the information it receives from the eyes which can cause a number of visual processing problems. The study aimed to test the effectiveness of visuomotor feedback training (VFT) in treating the most common of these, visual neglect, which happens when the brain does not process the information about what is seen on one side of space.
Patients with visual neglect may not be aware of the left or right side depending on the side of their stroke. For example, if the stroke affects the right side of the brain then patients will have problems processing the left side. This means they might accidentally ignore people, or even their own body, and may bump into things because they do not realise they are there.
The researchers, led by Dr Stephanie Rossit of UEA's School of Psychology and Dr Monika Harvey of the University Glasgow's School of Psychology, developed and tested a version of VFT for rehabilitating visual neglect in the patient's home.
A simple treatment of grasping, lifting and balancing wooden rods of different sizes, the idea is that by repeatedly grasping the rod so that it is balanced when lifted, the patients receive different sources of feedback from their senses - seeing, touching and feeling the rod tilting - which helps reduce the visual neglect. This relatively unexplored technique is not currently in clinical use.