Stroke survivors often struggle with gait asymmetry post-therapy. Researchers are exploring Virtual Reality (VR) to address this problem with the help of visual feedback and virtual avatars. VR also makes repetitive tasks more enjoyable, improving patient compliance and outcomes.
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Stroke survivors often struggle with gait asymmetry post-therapy. Researchers are exploring Virtual Reality (VR) to address this problem with the help of visual feedback and virtual avatars. VR also makes repetitive tasks more enjoyable, improving patient compliance and outcomes. Motor adaptation, essential in rehabilitation, involves adjusting movements to new conditions. Studies have used forms of motor adaptation with visual feedback to distort participants' gait symmetry, making people walk asymmetrically. This approach is called implicit Visual Feedback Distortion (VFD), where visual feedback is manipulated without the user's awareness. This thesis explores using implicit VFD with avatars in immersive VR to address gait asymmetry. An experiment with 11 healthy participants tested implicit VFD by gradually increasing the step length of the avatar's right leg. Contrary to previous screen-based VFD studies, results showed no significant effect on gait symmetry. Additionally, no correlations were found between step symmetry and psychological states (presence, embodiment, motivation). We hypothesize that the high distortion level on the right foot, suboptimal virtual environment design, and reported neck pain contributed to these findings. Future research should explore different VFD designs, or look at multiple groups to see what conditions lead to more gait asymmetry during adaptation.