Individuals with acquired brain injury (ABI) commonly present with impairments in cognitive abilities. As these competencies seem to be predictive of patients’ abilities to reintegrate into the everyday settings, it is crucial to assess them properly. However, previous research has indicated that patients may perform relatively well on standard tests of cognitive functioning, but may nonetheless encounter significant difficulties in organizing and executing everyday tasks. In order to overcome this issue, virtual reality (VR) methods have been introduced in clinical practice with the aim of creating assessments that simulate real-world activities and thus, provide a clearer picture of patients’ functioning in everyday settings. This review offers an overview of VR assessment tools described in the scientific literature between 2010 and 2019. Overall, 38 relevant records describing 31 different tools were found. Among these tools, 16 assessed executive functions and prospective memory, while the other 15 assessed visuo-spatial abilities. Although promising results have been reported, our analysis indicated that about half of the tools deliver tasks that differ from everyday activities, thus limiting the generalizability of patients’ performance to the real-world. Moreover, a variety of methodological shortfalls related to study Internal and External Validity have been highlighted, which hamper the possibility of drawing definite recommendations on tool choice. These limitations suggest the importance of putting considerable efforts into the improvement or development of VR tools for patients with ABI for both research and clinical purposes, considering the great potential of this form of assessment.

患有获得性脑损伤（ABI）的个体通常会出现认知能力障碍。由于这些能力似乎可以预测患者重新融入日常环境的能力，因此正确评估它们至关重要。然而，之前的研究表明，患者在认知功能的标准测试中可能表现相对较好，但在组织和执行日常任务时可能会遇到重大困难。为了克服这个问题，虚拟现实（VR）方法已被引入临床实践，目的是创建模拟现实世界活动的评估，从而更清晰地了解患者在日常环境中的功能。本综述概述了 2010 年至 2019 年间科学文献中描述的 VR 评估工具。总体而言，找到了描述 31 种不同工具的 38 条相关记录。在这些工具中，16 个评估执行功能和前瞻性记忆，另外 15 个评估视觉空间能力。尽管已经报道了有希望的结果，但我们的分析表明，大约一半的工具提供的任务与日常活动不同，从而限制了患者表现在现实世界中的普遍性。此外，与内部和外部有效性研究相关的各种方法学缺陷也被凸显，这阻碍了就工具选择提出明确建议的可能性。这些局限性表明，考虑到这种评估形式的巨大潜力，出于研究和临床目的，投入大量精力改进或开发适用于 ABI 患者的 VR 工具的重要性。