Virtual reality (VR) therapies have been used in health and mental health care settings. The applicability of VR expressive tools has not yet been examined adequately in the creative arts therapies. This pilot qualitative study reports on 17 participants’ experiences with VR art-making tools to determine its relevance to art therapy practice and research. Findings indicate that VR-based self-expression is an embodied visual expression, generates novel artistic and imaginal responses, and requires a developmental trajectory in expression and mastery. The unique characteristics of art therapy in VR were identified as positive emotions, play and exploration, learning and mastery, access, and storage. VR has the potential to enhance psychological health and well-being through creativity, enhanced imagination, interactivity, and problem solving.

Spinal circuits may organize trajectories using pattern generators and synergies. In frogs, prior work supports fixed-duration pulses of fixed composition synergies, forming primitives. In wiping behaviors, spinal frogs adjust their motor activity according to the starting limb position and generate fairly straight and accurate isochronous trajectories across the workspace. To test whether a compact description using primitives modulated by proprioceptive feedback could reproduce such trajectory formation, we built a biomechanical model based on physiological data. We recorded from hindlimb muscle spindles to evaluate possible proprioceptive input. As movement was initiated, early skeletofusimotor activity enhanced many muscle spindles firing rates. Before movement began, a rapid estimate of the limb position from simple combinations of spindle rates was possible. Three primitives were used in the model with muscle compositions based on those observed in frogs. Our simulations showed that simple gain and phase shifts of primitives based on published feedback mechanisms could generate accurate isochronous trajectories and motor patterns that matched those observed. Although on-line feedback effects were omitted from the model after movement onset, our primitive-based model reproduced the wiping behavior across a range of starting positions. Without modifications from proprioceptive feedback, the model behaviors missed the target in a manner similar to that in deafferented frogs. These data show how early proprioception might be used to make a simple estimate initial limb state and to implicitly plan a movement using observed spinal motor primitives. Simulations showed that choice of synergy composition played a role in this simplicity. To generate froglike trajectories, a hip flexor synergy without sartorius required motor patterns with more proprioceptive knee flexor control than did patterns built with a more natural synergy including sartorius. Such synergy choices and control strategies may simplify the circuitry required for reflex trajectory construction and adaptation.

This study explored virtual reality (VR) as an educational tool to offer immersive and experiential learning environments to biomedical engineering (BME) students. VR and traditional two-dimensional (2D) videos were created and used to teach required communication skills to BME students' while working with clinical partners in healthcare settings. The videos of interdisciplinary teams (engineering and nursing students) tackling medical device-related problems, similar to those commonly observed in healthcare settings, were shown to BME students. Student surveys indicated that, through VR videos, they felt more immersed in real-world clinical scenarios while learning about the clinical problems, each team-member's areas of expertise, their roles and responsibilities, and how an interdisciplinary team operated collectively to solve a problem in the presented settings. Students with a prior in-person immersion experience, in the presented settings, reported VR videos to serve as a possible alternative to in-person immersion and a useful tool for their preparedness for real-world clinical immersion. We concluded that VR holds promise as an educational tool to offer simulated clinical scenarios that are effective in training BME students for interprofessional collaborations.

Brain-machine interface (BMI) systems hold the potential to return lost functions to patients with motor disorders. To date, most efforts in BMI have concentrated on decoding neural activity from forearm areas of cortex to operate a robotic arm or perform other manipulation tasks. Efforts have neglected the locomotion functions of hindlimb/trunk cortex. However, the role of cortex in hindlimb locomotion of intact rats, which are often model systems for BMI testing, is usually considered to be small. Thus, the quality of representations of locomotion available in this area was uncertain. We designed a new rodent BMI system, and tested decoding of the kinematics of trunk and hindlimbs during locomotion using linear regression. Recordings were made from the motor cortex of the hindlimb/trunk area in rats using arrays of six tetrodes (24 channels total). We found that multiple movement-related variables could be decoded simultaneously during locomotion, ranging from the proximal robot/pelvis attachment point, and the distal toe position, through hindlimb joint angles and limb endpoint in a polar coordinate system. Remarkably, the best reconstructed motion parameters were the more proximal kinematics, which might relate to global task variables. The pelvis motion was significantly better reconstructed than any other motion features.

Unlike adult spinalized rats, approximately 20% of rats spinalized as postnatal day 1 or 2 (P1/P2) neonates achieve autonomous hindlimb weight support. Cortical representations of mid/low trunk occur only in such rats with high weight support. However, the importance of hindlimb/trunk motor cortex in function of spinalized rats remains unclear. We tested the importance of trunk sensorimotor cortex in their locomotion using lesions guided by cortical microstimulation in P1/P2 weight-supporting neonatal spinalized rats and controls. In four intact control rats, lesions of hindlimb/trunk cortex caused no treadmill deficits. All spinalized rats lesioned in trunk cortex (n = 16: 4 transplant, 6 transect, 6 transect + fibrin glue) lost an average of about 40% of their weight support. Intact trunk cortex was essential to their level of function. Lesion of trunk cortex substantially increased roll of the hindquarters, which correlated to diminished weight support, but other kinematic stepping parameters showed little change. Embryonic day 14 (E14) transplants support development of the trunk motor representations in their normal location. We tested the role of novel relay circuits arising from the grafts in such cortical representations in E14 transplants using the rats that received (noncellular) fibrin glue grafting at P1/P2 (8 allografts and 32 xenografts). Fibrin-repaired rats with autonomous weight support also had trunk cortical representations similar to those of E14 transplant rats. Thus acellular repair and intrinsic plasticity were sufficient to support the observed features. Our data show that effective cortical mechanisms for trunk control are essential for autonomous weight support in P1/P2 spinalized rats and these can be achieved by intrinsic plasticity.