Effectiveness of AOT Based on Virtual Reality in Stroke Rehabilitation.

The experimental treatment will consist of 15 hours (min. 15, max. 20), and will be carried out 4 days/week for a total duration of 5 weeks. During the rehabilitation sessions, the patient will be instructed to carefully watch videos lasting about 1.5 minutes, presented on Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) monitor, consisting in unimanual or bimanual actions performed by an actor, from a lateral perspective. Subsequently, the patient will be asked to imitate the actions presented for at least 3 consecutive times, within a time window of 3 min., using the same objects observed in the video, in a virtual scenario (VR), through the Khymeia Virtual Reality Rehabilitation System (VRRS).

Patients of the control group will be required to observe videos depicting naturalistic scenes, without motor contents, for 1.5 min. Then, they will receive a motor training in the VR environment, performing the same type of exercises included in the above-described experimental treatment, prompted by the verbal instructions of an expert therapist. Thus, the general setting for carrying out the rehabilitation sessions will be identical to that of the experimental treatment, except for the fact that the control group will not be involved in action observation before preforming the exercises. Thus, the control treatment is not based on action imitation, but on purely motor execution.