The fun.tast.tisch. Project – A Novel Approach to Neuro-Rehabilitation Using an Interactive Multiuser Multitouch Tabletop

Acquired brain injury, mostly caused by stroke, is one main cause for adult disability, often involving cognitive impairment. Neuro-rehabilitation aims at treating these impairments by maximizing the effect of brain plasticity and functional reorganization. Specific exercises help patients to regain skills that have temporarily been lost. Yet, conventional training can involve disadvantages, e.g., the setup of an individual training environment causes a lot of effort, the computation of statistics is time-consuming and must be done by therapists manually, and it is usually not possible to discreetly adapt the level of difficulty of an exercise. Further, software solutions for desktop PCs often do not lead to the desirable results because they are too distinct from the conventional therapy setting. The fun.tast.tisch.project introduces a tabletop-based training system for the application in neuro-rehabilitation. This system should not only come close to the conventional setting but also overcome problems involved in existing solutions. The paper introduces the project, describes its first module Tangram, and summarizes the results of a small-scale study conducted to evaluate the module with the help of therapists and patients at an early stage of development.