Development of a directional feedback in an interactive program for visual neglect patients

Abstract

Consulta en la Biblioteca ETSI Industriales (Riunet)

[EN] People with hemispatial neglect have had a brain injury or a stroke and up to 70% of them experience loss of their visual eld causing a visual neglect on most cases on the left-hand side. There are old fashion techniques used in training methods for visual neglect, like di erent drawing exercises and some basic computer based programs that train the visual eld of a patient. These programs are not that adjustable and limited in use. The program VN, is an improvement to other programs having a set of tools to edit and change the setup depending on the condition of visual neglect of the patient. All games are playable on a computer using a mouse or a touch screen monitor to improve hand-eye coordination. For making this a more special training method than others, there are multiple di erent games to train the left visual eld, exploration games for the environment training, touch screen games that train hand-eye movement and labyrinth games. This project shows the electronics part that includes physically visual feedback with LED lights in six di erent places of the outer frame of the screen and two wristbands that have vibrating motors. Currently, this games has a feedback consisting in a results page that shows how many times they played right or wrong. Now, the feedback is in real time. If one of the areas is touched in the correct place or moment the associate LED bar will switch on green light. On the other hand, if it is touched when or where it should not be touched, then the associated bar to the area touched will turn on red. In addition, to know which of the sides is being touched, the patient will have two wristbands. When the patient touches the left part of the screen, the left wristband will vibrate. Otherwise, if the right part of the screen is touched, then the right wristband will vibrate. Finally, if the area touched is one in the middle of the screen, then both of the wristbands will vibrate. This report goes through each step of the work, designing schematics and the look of the device with di erent programs, component choosing, testing and building circuit boards. It is divided as follows, rstly an introduction (Chapter 1) to the visual neglect problem, causes and consequences, and describing the games already done, as well as an overview of the project. As this project consist in build an electronic device to an already done tool for Visual Neglect, in the Chapter 2 will be shown all the components needed. Brie y, a FIFO module is needed for com- munications software-hardware, NMOS transistor working as a switch to connect output pins with the led circuit, RGB LEDs to be able to change the colour of the light depending on if the result is right or wrong, pull-down resistors to avoid the LEDs to shine when they should not, logic gates to build the logic circuit, and vibration motors to make the wristbands. Afterwards, how to connect everything will be shown in Chapter 3 and how to make it real on printed circuit boards in the Chapter 5.