Skip Rizzo, a neuropsychologist at the Medical Virtual Reality Lab at the University of Southern California, is more interested in the therapeutic value of the tech. For years, he’s used VR to help treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“When we study people with PTSD and we put them in an fMRI system, for example, and study their brain activation when they’re presented with cues that are reminiscent to the trauma, we see hyper-activation of the amygdala, the fight-or-flight area in the brain,” Rizzo said. “They react as if it’s a real thing.”
Listen to Skip discuss this more with Jad Sleiman on WHYY or read the article on the WHYY website.