NCT02020824

Virtual Reality and Concept of Control in the Treatment of Acrophobia

Virtual Reality and Concept of Control in the Treatment of Acrophobia by Exposure to Virtual Environments: Comparative Test

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 60 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Qualissima · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 60 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Virtual reality is currently used as a therapeutic strategy in common phobia as agoraphobia or acrophobia, since it permits to have a better control (on occurrence of events or on the environment) during the therapy than in "in vivo" therapy. Our hypothesis here is that we can improves the therapeutic effects of the virtual exposure by giving control to acrophobic patients during their exposure.

Detailed description

The study is based on the exposure of acrophobic patients to virtual environments. During the study, several groups of patients will be distributed according to different conditions: exposure to anxiogenous virtual environments and exposure with the ability to control and secure the anxiogenous virtual environments. The interest of this project is to improve therapy by exposure to virtual reality. Our project offers a systematic therapeutic approach (using virtual reality and the concept of control) where current therapy are too often approximate. We aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of the control of virtual environments on symptomatic and psychophysiological levels, to evaluate the adoption of these methods in the couple patients-caregivers and also to understand the brain mechanisms (including those prefrontal) involved in this therapy.

Conditions

• Phobic Disorders

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Exposure to anxiogenous environments	The anxiogenous environments are defined by several levels of possible anxiety classified progressively and independently by each patient at the beginning of the study. The exposure is applied during the 8 sessions for each of the arms "Exposure to anxiogenous environments (with or without control)".
OTHER	Imagery with functional MRI initial	Subjects will be submitted to 1 session of fMRI during their first visit, in order to identify and evaluate the activation of cerebral fields involved during the exposure to anxiogenous environments.
OTHER	Imagery with PET-scanner initial	Subjects will be submitted to 1 session of PET-scanner during their first visit, in order to measure the synaptic activity during the exposure to anxiogenous environments.
OTHER	Imagery with functional MRI final	Patients will be submitted to 1 session of fMRI during a follow-up visit, in order to identify and evaluate the activation of cerebral fields involved during the exposure to anxiogenous environments.
OTHER	Imagery with PET-scanner final	Patients will be submitted to 1 session of PET-scanner during a follow-up visit, in order to measure the synaptic activity during the exposure to anxiogenous environments.

Timeline

• Start date: 2014-04-01
• Primary completion: 2017-06-01
• Completion: 2017-07-01
• First posted: 2013-12-25
• Last updated: 2015-10-30

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France