Deans' stroke musings: Virtual Reality Enhances Task-Related Cortical Oxygenation Responses to Motor Imagery in Stroke Rehabilitation

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Saturday, September 12, 2026

Virtual Reality Enhances Task-Related Cortical Oxygenation Responses to Motor Imagery in Stroke Rehabilitation

Since you haven't even measured actual movement recovery;

ABSOLUTELY FUCKING USELESS! Doesn't anyone in stroke know the only goal of survivors IS 100% RECOVERY!

Virtual Reality Enhances Task-Related Cortical Oxygenation Responses to Motor Imagery in StrokeRehabilitation

Zhijie Ke†, Wen Li†, Seedahmed S. Mahmoud, Hang Zhong, Hongfu Luo, Shaowei Guo*, Qiang Fang*

Abstract

Goal:

This study investigated whether immersive virtual reality (VR) enhances rehabilitation-relevant task related cortical oxygenation responses following stroke compared to conventional two-dimensional (2D) video.

Methods:

Twenty individuals with stroke completed upper limb, lower-limb, and whole-body motor imagery tasks under both VR-assisted and video-assisted conditions. Brain activity was recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, and task-related activation and functional connectivity were analyzed.

Results:

Compared with video, VR elicited larger task-related cortical oxygenation responses during LLI and WBI (∆ =1.95, q=0.041, dz =0.54; ∆=1.74, q=0.0193, dz =0.68) and increased mean connectivity across ULI, LLI, and WBI (∆ = 0.38, q = 0.0006; ∆=0.36, q=0.004; ∆=0.33, q=0.013). Global efficiency showed a similar pattern, with greater enhancement in the acute stage.

Conclusions:

Brief immersive VR action observation strengthens subsequent motor-imagery hemodynamic responses and increases large-scale cortical integration following a stroke. These findings support VR as a promising low-burden adjunct to imagery-based rehabilitation training protocols.

Index Terms

Stroke, motor imagery, virtual reality, fNIRS.