Sonhos como Terapia de Realidade Virtual para Ansiedade

Virtual Reality Therapy for Anxiety Disorders: Advances in Evaluation and Treatment

Auteur(s) : WIEDERHOLD Brenda K., WIEDERHOLD Mark D.
Date de parution: 09-2004
Langue : ANGLAIS
216p. 25.4x17.8 Broché
Etat : Disponible chez l'éditeur (délai de livraison : 15 jours)

Explores how the latest virtual reality interventions can be used to treat patients with anxiety disorders. Virtual reality therapy enables the patient to experience a realistic, yet carefully controlled exposure to an anxiety-provoking scenario, in the therapist's own office.

Um tempo atrás escrevi isso no impublicávelmente longo artigo Dreams, endocannabinoids and itinerant dynamics in neural networks: reelaborating the Crick-Mitchison unlearning hypothesis:

In a nutshell, we propose that dream narrative function is akin to desensitization therapy [54], done in a simulated and virtual environment (the dream). It is part of a homeostatic control mechanism for fear, anxiety and obsession, related to excessive brain plasticity. Since dream narratives are simulations, they expose the subject to charged emotional experiences in a secure way. This point has also been emphasized by Revonsuo evolutionary dream theory [68], although we stress here emotional (un)learning instead of cognitive learning in virtual environments.

The “virtual exploratory behavior” hypothesis explains why the specific areas listed by Hobson and Mc- Carkey [28] [58] [29] [78] are the most activated during REM-sleep: brain areas related to walking function (motor cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum, vestibular area [8]), visual areas in primates (but with inactivation of primary V1 area and frontal areas, forming a visual/limbic closed system [9]), olfactory bulb in other mammals [50]. Basically, they are related to exploratory behavior and are co-activated with emotional response in amygdala and spatial memory in hippocampus [8]. We also remember that, in the waking animal, theta waves are related to exploratory behavior and PGO waves are elicited in startling responses.

Emotional (un)learning in dreams is not a simple rehearsal (replay) of previous experience, but is done by new exploratory behavior in a virtual scenario whose features could be made of old or recently explored environments.

The simulated exploratory behavior is “new” in the sense that the outcomes experienced in the dream, although stereotyped, are not simple replays of recent or old experiences but reflect generalized fears posing new exercises and emotional training (in Nietzsche’s sense). For example, dreams of subjects with PTSD do not simply replay the primary experience: although representing threatening scenarios, they frequently refer to the present and contains distorted features [22] .