Aquatic Therapy as a Programmable Multisensory Environment for Arousal and Postural Control After Severe Acquired...

Background/Objectives: Severe acquired brain injury (sABI) disrupts early rehabilitation because arousal fluctuates, trunk control is fragile, and agitation limits therapy tolerance; land-based practice is frequently constrained by fall risk and staffing. We aim to reframe aquatic therapy as a programmable multisensory environment to stabilize arousal and support axial alignment before conventional impairment targets are feasible. Here, programmable denotes the deliberate titration and reporting of water depth, turbulence or perturbation, temperature, body orientation, and flotation and manual support as intervention inputs. Methods: This perspective integrates principles from neurobehavioral assessment, motor control, and immersion physiology to propose the Arousal-Alignment-Action loop as a falsifiable model and to define manipulable aquatic inputs (water depth, turbulence or perturbation, temperature, body orientation, and flotation and manual support) as dosing parameters. We outline a pragmatic testing ladder (within-session micro-experiments, feasibility studies, and embedded evaluations) and a minimal outcomes and confounder set to support cumulative evidence. Results: The framework links state regulation to alignment and goal-directed behavior, specifies predictions that can fail, and highlights boundary conditions (sedation, autonomic instability, pain, recent surgery or wounds, and cervical or cardiopulmonary constraints). A minimal outcome package spanning arousal/responsiveness, trunk control, behavioral dysregulation, participation/tolerance, and basic physiology is proposed, with optional objective adjuncts for mechanism-oriented studies. Conclusions: Treating water as a measurable and titratable medium, rather than a generic modality, may reduce early intensity bottlenecks and improve implementability and comparability of aquatic neurorehabilitation research in medically stable sABI; however, the model is intended as hypothesis-generating until supported by stronger direct clinical evidence.