Upper Limb Rehabilitation Therapies Based in Videogames Technology Review

Worldwide, stroke is the third cause of physical disability, rehabilitation therapy is a main topic of focus for the recovery of life quality. Rehabilitation of these patients presents great challenges since many of them do not find the motivation to perform the necessary exercises, or do not have the economic resources or the adequate support to receive physiotherapy. For several years now, an alternative that has been in development is game-based rehabilitation, since this could be used in a hospital environment and eventually at patients home. The aim of this review is to present the advances in videogames technology to be used for rehabilitation and training purposes- in preparation for prosthetics fitting or Neuroprosthesis control training-, as well as the devices that are being used to make this alternative more tangible. Videogames technology rehabilitation still has several challenges to work on, more research and development of platforms to have a larger variety of games to engage with different age-range patients is still necessary.