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Redefining Virtual Reality Therapy for Anxiety Disorders

Objective

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) – the most common type of anxiety disorders – has severe emotional, financial and social consequences for patients, their families and their social network. Affecting about 7% of Europeans at some point in their life, SAD produces substantial societal cost due to long lasting treatments and extensive periods of reduced working capacity. To address this important problem, the project will establish an innovative system for treating SAD by exploiting the proven therapeutic potential of advanced Virtual Reality (VR) technology.
SAD is predominantly treated with cognitive behavioural therapy, in which patients are repeatedly exposed to fear-provoking, social situations. However, patients often have to wait very long before treatment becomes available, exposure is rarely applied with the necessary intensity due to resource limitations, and objective measurement of treatment efficacy and dynamic adjustment of therapeutic scenarios is hardly possible. These problems can be overcome with VR based, controlled exposure to virtual renditions of fear provoking situations, which has been shown to surpass traditional therapies in terms of treatment efficacy, patient acceptance, and economic efficiency.
Given that advanced VR technology has become very affordable, a widespread application of VR for the treatment of SAD is now within reach. The proposed project will fuse the applicant’s extensive VR expertise with established principles for VR based therapy to create an innovative system for the treatment of SAD. This system will, for the first time, combine interactive 3D environments with external physiological measures (e.g eye tracking data) and real-time data analyses techniques to provide a precise, flexible and time and cost-efficient therapeutic approach. Established collaborations with clinical partners will allow for continuous testing and refinement of the system, thus ensuring that market readiness can be achieved within the funding period.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-POC - Proof of Concept Grant

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2017-PoC

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Host institution

DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUR NEURODEGENERATIVE ERKRANKUNGEN EV
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 148 403,00
Address
VENUSBERG-CAMPUS 1/99
53127 BONN
Germany

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Region
Nordrhein-Westfalen Köln Bonn, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 148 403,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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