BraveMind - Analysis and Details
Let us understand Bravemind by knowing the answers for these 3 basic questions.
Why? Who? What?
1)Who created this and who is working on it?
It was created at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies and is provided free of charge for its clinical use and research upon documenting clinician expertise in the delivery of Prolonged Exposure Therapy for the treatment of combat-related PTSD.
Research period - 2005-present
Project Leaders:
Arno Hartholt
Albert Rizzo
2) Why was it created?
Bravemind was developed to address the challenges in normal treatment of PTSD by offering a means by which to overcome the natural avoidance tendency of trauma sufferers.
The potential of using VR for the treatment of PTSD is supported by previous reports in which patients with PTSD, who were unresponsive to previous imaginal Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy treatments, went on to respond successfully to Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET).
3)What it does?
Bravemind allows clinicians to gradually immerse patients into virtual environments representative of their traumatic experiences in a controlled, stepwise fashion by providing the capability to control multi-sensory emotional stimuli and monitor the intensity of the patients’ stress responses via advanced brain imaging and psychophysiological assessment techniques
Advatages ->
interactive - The system acts according to the user interaction with the system and based on him action the system responds.
Multi sensory - Not just eyes but ears and other organs are involved so it can easily felt like the real time situation and
Immersive
Easy to create and tailor to patient needs - The virtual environment can be made as per user needs using the tools to develop applications in VR.
Clinicians can control, document and measure stimuli and patient responses
Offering clinical assessment, treatment and research options that are not available via traditional methods.
Sources