Virtual Reality: A New Tool to Assess the Association between Balance and Cognitive Style

Despite the growing enthusiasm for the use of virtual reality in the clinic, some authors emphasize that a clear understanding of its effectiveness in cognitive and motor rehabilitation is lacking. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of virtual reality on postural stability and balance recovery in healthy subjects with different cognitive profiles and to identify how increasing the complexity of a postural task by using virtual reality affects balance maintaining. To assess the postural stability of the subject before, during and after viewing the video sequence in virtual reality goggles, we used the method of computer-assisted stabilometry and found the correlation between the scores on the cognitive style of field-dependence/field-independence and vector and dynamic stabilometric indices.