By Liliana Torres
Is VR Giving You a Headache?
Have you ever been paralyzed by a phobia and wondered the ways in which you can overcome them? Well, VR might be an option – not to mention the other ways it’s being tested and used in the medical field. As of late, VR is being tested and used to treat phobias through gradual exposure to the phobia [1]. It’s also aiming to help individuals with disabilities to experience what may not be feasible under their daily circumstances [2]. At HQ, intern Ciera Jones and art director RJay Haluko are joining the expansion of VR in medicine by creating a proof of concept to understand what it’s like to have a migraine, in addition to its anatomical and environmental effects in 3D.
Ciera and RJay’s anatomy model is organized by the systems of the body; for example, the respiratory, digestive, and muscular systems are a few you can click among others. Someone looking at the human body through VR can click on a system and have the option to learn more about it. In this case, you would click on the brain to see how a migraine affects the brain’s nerves, function, and how it handles the sensitivity to light.
You might be wondering what it’s like to understand the body’s sensitivity to light through VR. In Local Wisdom’s model, you are immersed into a house with the option to walk around its rooms. Once you begin to walk around the house and the migraine kicks in, you notice that different house lights and even natural sunlight start to become uncomfortable and bothersome. While seeing inside the brain is an important scientific aspect of this model, walking around the rooms makes the experience more relatable as it mimics reality as closely as possible.
While our proof of concept is still under way, we hope that the efforts being made in medical VR will help increase awareness and shed light on real conditions experienced IRL by real people. Until the next VR segment …
Sources Include:
