The Use of Virtual Reality in the Treatment of Phobias

A year long project investigating the use of VR technology to conduct exposure therapy in the treatment of a range of phobias. The project is joint with the Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry (London) and involves controlled experiments into the treatment of arachnophobia.

Goal

The current treatment of arachnophobia involves a controlled exposure process during which the subject is taken from viewing pictures of spiders to handling a real tarantula. The aim of this project is to experiment with virtual simulations of spiders to investigate whether they are an effective in exposure therapy. Our task is to construct V-Bertha, the virtual spider who is to replace Bertha, the real tarantula currently used.

There have been a number of trials with real subjects using both desktop and immersive VR. We are developing the software for this project using SICS DIVE.

Example Images

Some early spider prototypes

The initial prototype used in the first trials

The Use of Virtual Reality in the Treatment of Phobias

Contents

Goal

Example Images

Links

Enabling Systems