Virtual Reality Therapy: Emerging Topics and Future Challenges
A special issue of Journal of Clinical Medicine (ISSN 2077-0383). This special issue belongs to the section "Mental Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 September 2022) | Viewed by 30691
Special Issue Editors
Interests: virtual reality; multisensory integration; bodily self-consciousness; interoceptive illusions; augmented reality; body memory; robotics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: body perception; virtual reality; interoception; multisensory integration; virtual reality treatment; interoceptive treatment; chronic pain; depression; anxiety; eating disorders
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Virtual reality (VR) is a simulative technology inducing the illusion of being present ("Being There") in a synthetic environment. To achieve this, VR experience, much like the human brain, maintains a model (simulation) of the body and the space around the user. This model is then used to predict the sensory consequences of an individual’s movements, providing to them the same scene they will see in the real world. Put simply, VR shares with the brain the same basic mechanism—embodied simulations—allowing computer technology to create a simulated world that individuals can manipulate and explore as if they were in it. This feature allows VR to fool the predictive coding mechanisms used by the brain generating the feeling of presence in a virtual body and in the digital space around it.
For this feature, VR has been used in therapy since the early 1990s. However, the recent release of consumer and standalone VR headsets is now improving the opportunities and availability of VR for mental health.
This Special Issue aims at exploring the present and future of the field, including emerging topics and discussions of the clinical potential of VR. We are interested in clinical trials supporting the potential of VR in therapy and in systematic reviews (Prospero registration is mandatory) assessing the potential of this technology in a given field.
Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Riva
Dr. Daniele Di Lernia
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- virtual reality
- mental health
- anxiety disorders
- pain management
- addictions
- eating and weight disorders
- psychosis
- self-help VR
- automated VR
- consumer VR