Virtual reality hope machines in a curative imaginary: recommendations for neurorehabilitation research from a critical disability studies perspective

Abstract

Purpose

This paper provides recommendations for neurorehabilitative research informed by insights from critical disability studies (CDS) and a research study that tested an augmented neurorehabilitative technology prototype.

Methods

The methodology combines critical reflection, feminist science studies and CDS to analyze how neurorehabilitation and disability studies conceptualize notions of disability and cure. It offers recommendations for reconciling the conflicting ideologies of cure that operate within neurorehabilitative research.

Results

The prototype acted as a kind of virtual reality hope machine that tapped into different emotions and language games regarding disability and cure. The result is five recommendations about the ways that a CDS perspective might inform neurorehabilitation research: (I) ensure clarity in recruitment materials to account for dominant social views on disability and the possibility of cure; (II) build “strong objectivity” into research methods through attention to social context and multiple meanings of terms; (III) engage in critical reflection about research processes and findings; (IV) incorporate principles of crip technoscience; and (V) include CDS perspectives in neurorehabilitation education.

Conclusions

Bridging a conversation between neurorehabilitative research and CDS can address the discrepancies between ideologies of cure, and situate rehabilitation within the wider concerns of social determinants of health and disability justice.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Bridging connections between rehabilitation studies and critical disability studies can generate productive insights that open up conversations with disabled people and a commitment to disability justice.

• Disability and cure are social constructs and may have different meanings for patients and rehabilitation professionals.

• Clinicians should be mindful of the conflicting ideological constructs and socio-political dimensions of disability and cure that are operating below the surface in the rehabilitation profession and in interactions between clinicians and patients.

• As technology continues to transform clinical rehabilitation care through virtual reality and other innovative paradigms, rehabilitation clinicians should recognize the potential for these technologies to become “hope machines,” generating patient expectations that are idealized constructions of hoped-for outcomes of returning to a previous state or level of functionality rather than predictive expectations of likely results.

Keywords:

• Neurorehabilitation
• disability
• cure
• critical disability studies
• research processes
• critical rehabilitation studies
• virtual reality

Acknowledgements

Thank you to our industry partner, Ilia Borishchev, CEO of IT Universe, who developed the VIBRAINT RehUP and made suggestions related to the neurorehabilitative study design.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use identity-first language in this article (“disabled people”), which emerges from a history of disability activism and the social model that claims disability as a social category and meaningful part of a person’s identity.

Additional information

Funding

This research was undertaken as part of the Vision: Science to Applications Program (VISTA) at York University, thanks in part to funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CREF).