NeuAR – A Review of the VR/AR Applications in the Neuroscience Domain
Pedro S. Gamito, Jorge Oliveira, Diogo Vieira De Morais, Pedro Joel Rosa, Tomaz Saraiv · InTech eBooks · 2011
This characteristic of VR settings has been acknowledged by the psychotherapists as a media to expose patients with anxiety disorders (AD) to anxiogenic cues within an ecologically sound and controlled environment.VR designed for therapeutic purposes can replicate any of the ansiogenic situations, enabling a better approximation to the ansiogenic world and inducing higher levels of engagement when compared to traditional imagination exposure (Riva et al., 2002).Hyperrealistic threatening stimuli provided by VR lead to higher attention, and subsequent encapsulation, which means, once the fear system is activated the participant perceives the synthetic world as being real (Hamm & Weike, 2005).Also, VR reduces the decalage between reality and imagination, by diminishing potential distraction or cognitive avoidance to the threatening stimuli (Vincelli & Riva, 2000).These and other studies revealed that VR exposure therapy (VRET) may be an alternative to in vivo and imagination exposure. www.intechopen.comAugmented Reality -Some Emerging Application Areas 132In fact, Parsons and Rizzo (2008), on a meta-analysis found an average size effect of 0.96, reflecting a large effect for VRET on the decrease of negative affective symptoms of the six affective domains studied (PTSD, Social Phobia, Arachnophobia, Acrophobia, Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia and Aerophobia).Also, Powers and Emmelkamp (2008), on another metaanalysis, observed a large mean effect size for VRET, when compared with in vivo and control conditions (waiting list, attention control, etc.).In this way, VRET as a form of a psycotherapeutic approach presents some advantages when compared with the two traditional exposure techniques: in vivo and imagination exposure.Concerning the first, VRET is able to replace real traumatic events, such as, war scenarios or motor vehicles accidents, eliciting traumatic emotions as if the patient were really there.The interactive simulation that VR encloses ensures a rich full sensorial experience similar to an in vivo occurrence.Regarding the last, in VRET the therapeutic environment is controlled by the therapist, something that does not occur when a patient is asked to imagine the anxiogenic situation as occurs during imagination exposure.Both typology and intensity of cues can be managed by the therapist.For instance, Rizzo and colleagues (2006), in a VR world devised to treat veterans with PTSD from Iraqi war, have included a console in which scenario's assets such as alternation between day and night, night vision, fog, helicopter coming in, spawn of enemies, among others functions, can be placed, as requested, in the VR world.Concerning rehabilitation, its three core pillars: repetition, feedback and motivation may gain from the use of VR (Holden, 2003).In rehabilitation, one of the most common procedures is the repeated and systematic training of the impaired functions (Allred et al., 2005).In agreement to the review from Sveistrup ( 2004), VR can provide training environments where visual and auditory feedback can be systematically manipulated according to individual differences.Furthermore, the use of 3D (3 dimensions) virtual environments offers the possibility of real-time feedback of subject's position and progression (Sveistrup, 2004).For Levin and colleagues (2005) the use of VR applications in rehabilitation can be effective because of the 3D spatial correspondence between movements in the real world and movements in the virtual worlds which, in turn, may facilitate realtime performance feedback.Cirstea and Levin (2007) referred that performance feedback can provide information regarding impaired motor movements.For example, Feintuch and colleagues ( 2006) developed a haptic-tactile feedback system that, when integrated on a video-capture-based VR environment, enables patients to feel a vibration on their fingers whenever they "touch" a ball on the VR world.Viau and colleagues (2004) analyzed movements performed by participants with hemiparesis with virtual objects in VR and real objects in real environments.These authors found no differences between performances in VR and real environments and suggested that this VR technique can be an effective training for rehabilitation.The repetitive practice is also an important aspect in motor and cognitive training as it improves performance in disabled patients (Chen et al., 2004).These authors used VR environments in children with cerebral palsy and observed that the repetitive practice of a particular motor aspect enables the coordination of a specific muscular system.And because VR is usually presented on a multimodal platform with several sorts of immersive cues, such as images and sounds, patients are more willing to engage and pursue www.intechopen.com