Wii-Hab!

Video games. Stimulating toys for little boys or valuable therapy tools? We bought a Nintendo Wii game system shortly after I came home from the hospital. The Wii system is different from traditional video games. Instead of sitting on the couch, exercising the all-important thumb muscles, the Wii system detects the position of the hand-held controller in space. When the user’s arm holding the Wii remote moves, the corresponding screen character’s arm moves too.  The Wii Fit is a game for Wii that comes with a platform (balance board) that detects the weight and every movement of the user. I did aerobic exercises, strength exercises, balance exercises and yoga on the Wii Fit. The balance games were particularly useful in improving my sturdiness. The Wii did not replace torture sessions at the gym, but it added a different dimension to my recovery.  I saw the value in this system as a therapy tool. As a patient, I knew the Wii system was helpful; as a scientist, I wanted to collect data to support my hypothesis. Once again, my ability and willingness to merge my personal and professional lives was about to pay off.

Physical Education Professor Chip Chandler and I wrote a grant to the President’s Innovation Fund at Skyline College, and we received funds to purchase a Wii system for a study to measure the benefits of using a Wii for brain-injured people. We recruited 10 people with some sort of brain injury for the study. Five of them would train on the Wii Fit twice a week, and all ten are tested on balance weekly. Here’s the best part: conducting this study are biology students! Students from my honors biology colloquium or students working on a special project in Biology collect the data, conduct the training, and analyze results. This project is appropriately titled “Wii-hab.”