Kicking the habit, virtually
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...the idea of a virtual crack house for cocaine addicts. The virtual crack house will work in much the same way as the virtual smoking program. The design team for Virtually Better visited local drug dens with local police in Georgia before they began creating the environment, eventually working from digital pictures. As a result, subjects will be able to view drug deals occurring in dark doorways and explore dim, dingy rooms. They will also hear the sounds of sexual encounters through closed doors and see addicts huddled in corners smoking pipes or sprawled on the floor. According to Rothbaum, a therapist would work with the subject throughout the experience to monitor and rate drug craving through a series of questions.

Researchers are also using virtual reality technology to add another layer to their studies. By projecting virtual environments into a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, or fMRI, they hope to use the resulting brain images to determine exactly which parts of the brain are activated when a former addict continues to experience a craving.

Preliminary results from a brain imaging study of nicotine addicts conducted by Steve Baumann, virtual reality/fMRI project manager for Psychology Software Tools, a private Pittsburgh company, reveal the feasibility of this technique. His results show brain activation in areas previously reported to be involved in drug craving and cigarette smoking, such as the amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. These results lay the groundwork for a controlled virtual reality smoking study in the fMRI and open the way for expansion to cocaine and alcohol addiction studies.

The goal of such integrated systems is to provide investigators and clinicians with flexible programs that can be tailored to their needs. Ultimately the technology won’t provide all the answers to the difficulties inherent in treating drug addiction, but it will add to the arsenal of available treatments. “Virtual reality programs don’t do the treatment by themselves, the therapist does the treatment,” Graap says, “but these are the tools.” r

photo credit: patrick bordnick, university of georgia