To the uninitiated, the machine Amber Blakesley is working looks a bit like a vertical, electronic version of Whack-a-Mole.

Blakesley, a therapy patient at the University of Utah clinic in Sugar House, presses buttons as fast as she can when little red lights flash on the Dynavision D2. Her occupational therapist, Marc Rosello, tracks her performance.

The U. is the first medical center in the Rocky Mountain region to get the machine, intended originally to help elite athletes hone their skills. Now, it is helping Blakesley, recovering from neurological surgery, reach a more critical goal: driving a car.

"The more I practice, the better I am," Blakesley says. "I feel more comfortable getting in the car."

Chris Noren, inpatient therapy manager for the U. hospital, says therapists have struggled to help their brain-injury patients improve visual acuity and reaction time, but there haven't been a lot of good tools in the past.

About five years ago, Mary Warren, an occupational therapist and associate professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham worked with Dynavision's parent company to help adapt and improve the product for use in hospitals.

About 600 Dynavision D2s are deployed around the nation, mostly in sports medicine institutions, according to the company's website. "The move to the hospital setting has only happened in the past 18 months," Noren said.

The U. has three of the machines, which cost $14,000 each. "With a lot of our stroke patients, half of their visual field is cut or gone," Noren says. "The patients don't realize they can't see that missing piece."

That's because the brain compensates by filling in the blank with the pattern of whatever is around it. "People actually walk into walls" because of how the brain works, he says.

Rosello times Blakesley as she works the machine, then speeds up the lights and adds a feature that requires her to say aloud a number that flashes in the machine's center at the same time.

If he notices she is using her right hand more than her left, he can reset the lights to flash mostly on the left side to help her build visual acuity.

"It makes you look around and react," Blakesley says, "which you have to do when you're driving."

Noren says older compensatory pen-and-paper therapies still work. If a patient is reading a newspaper, say, the therapist draws a red line on a column and tells them to read up to the line. Another therapy is lining a hallway on the patient's weaker side with pink sticky-notes and requiring the patient to gather all of them.

But the Dynavision D2 allows the therapist to document progress. "It's nice to see some new tools," Noren says. —

Dynavision D2

R A machine designed originally for athletes has been adapted for neurological therapy. The University of Utah is the first hospital in the Rocky Mountain region to offer its use to patients after strokes or surgeries.

More information • www.healthcare.utah.edu/rehab or www.dynavisiond2.com