LAUSR

Abstract During immersive balance rehabilitation, automatic visual-vestibular compensations occurs to reduce the patients’ visual reliance and improve the equilibrium. This paper describes the use of an identification procedure to characterise the relationship between visual stimulation features involved in this adaptive sensory compensation, and the balance improvement. The purpose is to determine the stimulus-response transfer functions (TF) associated to the equilibrium enhancement. Standing vestibular patients were stimulated by visual virtual flows, whose pattern and speed changed throughout successive stimulation sessions. The analysis of the feet centre-of-pressure, disequilibrium, and identified models parameters for one representative vestibular patient, showed that TF parameters evolved related to the gradual balance recovery boosted by the visual-vestibular compensation. This results suggest that identified TF parameters are suitable indicators for measuring the effect of sensory substitution on equilibrium recovery. This first step to model the relationship between the sensory re-weighting flexibility and the adaptation of postural commands is essential for future clinical studies using identification methods for sensorimotor evaluation in individualized vision-based balance rehabilitation