Neurosciences and psychology
- 14:00 GMT - 15:00 GMT
- Béatrice Hasler
- Session 4
XR for Peace - The Potential of Immersive Psychological Interventions for Conflict Resolution
Ongoing violent conflicts around the world remain one of the greatest challenges and threats to humanity. Alongside the political path to peacebuilding, the scientific community has embarked on the challenge of counteracting the causes of violent conflicts. Social psychologists have developed interventions that aim to overcome the psychological barriers that prevent a peaceful resolution of conflicts. However, these psychological interventions have only limited success.
Could XR technologies be used as an alternative and perhaps more powerful method for conflict resolution and peacebuilding?
After a brief introduction to the psychology of intergroup conflict, I will present examples of our recent studies conducted in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that demonstrate the potential of virtual reality to enhance peace promoting attitudes and emotions.
- 15:00 GMT - 16:00 GMT
- Isabel Van De Keere
- Session 4
Transforming and improving neurorehabilitation services with therapeutic virtual reality programs.
Immersive Rehab provides a personalised, engaging and clinically validated digital therapeutics solution in virtual reality to tackle the current limitations of neurorehabilitation, in particular for people with significant upper limb mobility limitations as a result of stroke, multiple sclerosis, ALS and spinal injury. Research has shown that retraining the brain can lead to important gains in mobility. By combining physical rehab with cognitive challenges, it is possible to obtain important gains in mobility and function. We propose that Immersive Rehab's digital therapeutics neurorehabilitation solution can impact this significantly.
- 16:00 GMT - 17:00 GMT
- Alires Almon
- Session 4
Psychological Privacy, Emotional Regulation, and Long Term Space Travel.
In this session presents the findings from a review of psychological research focused on the relationship between privacy, surveillance, health and performance. We are particularly concerned with the hypothesis that psychological privacy may be a fundamental requirement for emotion regulation and total surveillance a condition that undermines emotion regulation. As we define those terms, we will present a thorough analysis of the relevant research to support the idea that a balance can be struck between psychological privacy, individual privacy rights and effective health monitoring. From a team perspective, reductions in each of the crew members personal zones of empathy over the course of a long space mission would ultimately be detrimental. With increased mental health engagement (Ziebland, 2019) an optimal ‘Goldilocks zone’ of empathy has a greater chance of being sustained.
- 17:00 GMT - 18:00 GMT
- Susan Persky
- Session 4
Genomics in society: VR visions for the future
Applying virtual reality (VR) as an experimental research methodology enables consideration of important social and behavioral research questions in step with, and often in advance of, emerging genetic and genomic knowledge.
Although genetics and genomics are well understood in rare disease contexts, their application for precision medicine in a public health context (e.g., for obesity and diabetes prevention) is still an aspiration. VR-based research is able to test the influence of yet anticipated genomics applications in ways that would be logistically impractical or impossible in real-world health settings. We have applied VR in healthcare communication contexts to understand how variation in patient characteristics, provider characteristics, and clinical context influences outcomes of genomics-focused medical encounters. Here, we identify situations where we may risk inciting social stigma or discrimination through genomics integration. Through measurement of parent feeding behavior in a VR-based buffet simulation we have furthermore honed genomics communication approaches for conveying information about children’s adulthood disease risk.
This work aims to provide the needed evidence base to inform future genomic technologies, optimizing them to improve public health.