Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects the lives of more than 10 million people worldwide. 60-80% of individuals with PD experience falls due to freezing of gait (FoG) at least once a year, which is a major contributor to reduced independence and increased health care costs. Gait rehabilitation is traditionally conducted in the clinic, but it is difficult to provide additional training outside the clinic safely and effectively.
Our end goal is to create an individualized virtual reality training platform to reduce FoG in people with PD. Specifically, we will extend the use of virtual reality (VR) in gait training for at-home use through action observation, the use of the observation of the actions expected with a normal gait pattern. People with PD will “walk” through common triggers of FoG in an immersive VR environment, including crowded rooms, narrow hallways, and narrow doorways. As a first step, in the coming months we will validate whether the virtual reality setup will induce freezing of gait in people with PD.
We are currently in the process of finalizing our virtual reality setup and recruiting people with FoG in PD to participate in our study. We expect to begin running trials early next year to validate the effectiveness of reproducing FoG occurrences in our virtual reality environments while walking.
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