Virtual Reality (VR) Used To Explore Brain Conditions

What Can Virtual Reality Teach Us about Life with Brain Damage?

Thomas McMullan | July 6, 2016

[...] Gauntlett was violently mugged in 2007, and fell into a coma for three weeks. She suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of the attack, and now lives with a neurological condition that encompasses short-term memory problems, as well as epileptic seizures.
Following the attack, Gauntlett worked extensively in theatre as a writer and producer. In 2011 she founded the In My Shoes project – something she describes as an, “ever-expanding library of interactive experiences”. The project’s first iteration, Waking in Slough, made use of audiovisual and early virtual-reality technology, as well as touch, taste and smell, to put audience members in Gauntlett’s position of waking up in Slough after a seizure, totally unsure of how she got there.
Since then, Gauntlett has worked with a number of subjects to create immersive experiences that aim to communicate the experience of living with conditions such as bipolar disorder, PTSD and brain damage from a stroke. The latest, and most technologically ambitious, of these is Dancing With Myself – a 360-degree film, made with the help of VR production company Visualise over the course of 12 days.

"A virtual-reality simulation done at a Stanford University lab prepares nervous subjects for speaking in front of a crowd." Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-you-should-try-that-crazy-virtual-reality-headset-1458743074

<more at http://www.alphr.com/life-culture/1003882/what-can-virtual-reality-teach-us-about-life-with-brain-damage; related articles and links: http://www.notesonblindness.co.uk/ (+Video) (Notes on Blindness. A Feature film and Virtual Reality Experience) and http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/812067 (Virtual Reality Gets Real Results in TBI Rehabilitation. October 3, 2013)>