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patients with different neurological outcomes. Methods: We studied 49 patients who had suffered a severe TBI and 10 healthy control subjects using 18F-FDG-PET. The patients were divided into three groups: the MCS&VS group (n=17), which included patients who were in a vegetative or a minimally conscious state; the In-PTA group (n=12), which included patients in post-traumatic amnesia (PTA); and the Out-PTA group (n=20), which included patients who had recovered from PTA. SPM5 software was used to determine the metabolic differences between the groups. FDG-PET images were normalized and four regions of interest were generated around the thalamus, precuneus and the frontal and temporal lobes. The groups were parameterized using the Student's T-test. Principal component analysis was used to obtain an intensityestimated-value per subject to correlate the function between the structures.Results: Differences in glucose metabolism in all structures were related to the neurological outcome, and the most severe patients showed the most severe hypometabolism. We also found a significant correlation between the cortico-thalamocortical metabolism in all groups. Conclusions: Voxel-based analysis suggests a functional correlation between these four areas and decreased metabolism was associated with less favorable outcome. Higher levels of activation of the corticocortical connections appear to be related to better neurological conditions. Differences in the thalamo-cortical correlations between patients and controls may be related to traumatic dysfunction due to focal or diffuse lesions.3

Unilateral spatial neglect is a common consequence of stroke that directly affects the performance of activities of daily living. This impairment is traditionally assessed with paper-and-pencil tests that can lack correspondence to real life and are easily compensated. Virtual reality can immerse patients in more ecological scenarios, thus providing therapists with new tools to assess and train the effects of this impairment in simulated real tasks. This paper presents the clinical validation and convergent validity of a low-cost virtual reality system for training street-crossing in stroke patients with and without neglect. The performance of neglected patients was significantly worse than the performance of non-neglected and healthy participants. In addition, several correlations between the scores in the system and in the traditional scales were detected.

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