Design of 3D Virtual Neuropsychological Rehabilitation Activities

Virtual environments can be valid and efficient tools for neuropsychological rehabilitation of cognitive impairments. However,the specification of the virtual task is not easy for neuropsychologists who are not aware of game design and implementation issues. We present the method that we have followed to help therapists to describe the expected task functioning. Our system is split into different subsystems: interactions, task logic, messages,scoring and feedback. This way, therapists specify the requirements of each subsystem separately, which comes out to be easier and clearer. The game structure manages and composes the input and output of the different subsystems to run the game. All the interactions are specified according to a common syntax. This provides the desired flexibility to add, remove and modify interactions in run-time. In order to control the location of all the objects of the scenario, for each receiver surface, we define a pick-and-place grid that keeps record of the objects piled onto it. The game logic is implemented as a non-deterministic automaton that controls each task state, modifies in run-time the different subsystems and programs new interactions.Moreover, we have designed a graphical editor to describe the game logic in a simple way, focusing only on relevant states of the application.