Adaptive immersive Virtual Environments as a treatment for depersonalization disorder.

Q3 Medicine
Psychiatrike = Psychiatriki Pub Date : 2021-12-20 Epub Date: 2021-08-05 DOI:10.22365/jpsych.2021.032
Panayiotis Patrikelis, George Konstantakopoulos, Lambros Messinis, Athanasia Alexoudi, Maria Stefanatou, Grigorios Nasios, Stylianos Gatzonis
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Depersonalization is a dissociative disorder associated to a profound disruption of self-awareness in the form of emotional numbing and feelings of disembodiment. The salient feature of depersonalization is a breakdown in the familiarity of one's psychological and somatic self (and surroundings when derealization is also present), in spite of being aware of the unreality of the change. At an early stage of research it was realized that people inclined to dissociation find it harder to tolerate discontinuity in perceptual environments, possibly due to a rigid perceptual attitude. Consequently, perceptual discontinuity experienced during momentary immersion into a VE would be expected to increase symptoms of dissociation among individuals prone to develop them. It has been put forward that a tendency toward immersion or absorption, linking to imaginative processes underlying the dissociative experience, significantly relates to the level of change in virtual reality-induced dissociative symptoms. Consequently, it has been implied that increased tolerability of perceptual discontinuities and a more flexible perceptual attitude in people suffering depersonalization/derealization disorder may be of help. We propose the use of adaptive immersive virtual environments to the treatment of depersonalization. In particular, we propose that implementation of biofeedback electrical stimulation to detect somato-sensory processing bias may contribute to selectively targeting deranged neurocognitive processing components, and as an indirect consequence promote, to some extent, the diagnostic process. Psychophysiological approaches may be of help in the treatment of depersonalization via additional series of afferent inputs - virtual reality (VR) stimuli - to alter the receptive fields of the affected proprioceptive systems and reorganize them. The aim of this paper is to stimulate future research towards the development of potential virtual rehabilitation programs based on biofeedback, electrical stimulation and concurrent measurement of galvanic skin response and EEG targeting selective somatosensory stimulation in patients with depersonalization. Our research hypotheses might constitute a starting point for the development of new treatment tools for depersonalization in particular and depersonalization/derealization disorder in general.

自适应沉浸式虚拟环境作为人格解体障碍的治疗。
人格解体是一种分离性障碍,与自我意识的深刻破坏有关,表现为情感麻木和脱离实体的感觉。去人格化的显著特征是,尽管意识到这种变化是不真实的,但对一个人的心理和身体自我(以及现实感也存在时的环境)的熟悉程度有所下降。在研究的早期阶段,人们意识到倾向于分离的人很难忍受感知环境中的不连续性,这可能是由于僵化的感知态度。因此,在瞬间沉浸于虚拟现实中所经历的知觉不连续将会增加易患分离症状的个体的分离症状。有人提出,沉浸或吸收的倾向与游离体验背后的想象过程有关,与虚拟现实诱发的游离症状的变化水平显著相关。因此,研究表明,人格解体/现实感丧失障碍患者对感知不连续性的容忍度增加和更灵活的感知态度可能会有所帮助。我们建议使用自适应沉浸式虚拟环境来治疗人格解体。特别是,我们提出实施生物反馈电刺激来检测躯体-感觉加工偏差可能有助于选择性地靶向紊乱的神经认知加工成分,并在某种程度上间接促进诊断过程。心理生理学方法可能有助于治疗去人格化,通过额外的一系列传入输入-虚拟现实(VR)刺激-改变受影响的本体感觉系统的接受野并重新组织它们。本文的目的是促进未来的研究,以开发潜在的虚拟康复方案,该方案基于生物反馈、电刺激以及皮肤电反应和脑电图的同步测量,针对选择性体感刺激去人格化患者。我们的研究假设可能会成为开发新的治疗工具的起点,特别是去人格化和一般的去人格化/现实感丧失障碍。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Psychiatrike = Psychiatriki
Psychiatrike = Psychiatriki Medicine-Medicine (all)
CiteScore
2.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
37
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