Ferraioli Francesca, Culicetto Laura, Cecchetti Luca, Falzone Alessandra, Tomaiuolo Francesco, Quartarone Angelo, Vicario Carmelo Mario
Department of Cognitive Science, University of Messina, 98121 Messina, Italy.
IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, 55100 Lucca, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2024 May 17;14(5):510. doi: 10.3390/brainsci14050510.
Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET), particularly immersive Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (iVRET), has gained attraction as an innovative approach in exposure therapy (ET), notably for some anxiety disorders with a fear of contamination component, such as spider phobia (SP) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This systematic work investigates iVRET's effectiveness in modulating disgust emotion-a shared aberrant feature across these disorders. Recent reviews have evaluated VRET's efficacy against in vivo ET. However, emerging evidence also highlights iVRET's potential in diminishing atypical disgust and related avoidance behaviors, expanding beyond traditional fear-focused outcomes. Our systematic synthesis, adhering to PRISMA guidelines, aims to fill this gap by assessing iVRET's efficacy in regulating disgust emotion within both clinical and at-risk populations, identified through standardized questionnaires and subjective disgust ratings. This research analyzes data from eight studies on clinical populations and five on healthy populations, offering an insight into iVRET's potential to mitigate the aberrant disgust response, a common transdiagnostic feature in varied psychopathologies. The findings support iVRET's clinical relevance in disgust management, providing evidence for a broader therapeutic application of iVRET and pointing out the need for more focused and complete investigations in this emergent field.
虚拟现实暴露疗法（VRET），尤其是沉浸式虚拟现实暴露疗法（iVRET），作为暴露疗法（ET）中的一种创新方法已受到关注，特别是对于一些伴有恐惧污染成分的焦虑症，如蜘蛛恐惧症（SP）和强迫症（OCD）。这项系统性研究探讨了iVRET在调节厌恶情绪方面的有效性——厌恶情绪是这些疾病共有的异常特征。近期的综述评估了VRET相对于现场暴露疗法的疗效。然而，新出现的证据也凸显了iVRET在减少非典型厌恶及相关回避行为方面的潜力，其作用范围超出了传统的以恐惧为重点的治疗效果。我们遵循PRISMA指南进行的系统性综述，旨在通过评估iVRET在临床人群和高危人群中调节厌恶情绪的疗效来填补这一空白，这些人群是通过标准化问卷和主观厌恶评分确定的。本研究分析了八项针对临床人群的研究和五项针对健康人群的研究数据，深入了解了iVRET减轻异常厌恶反应的潜力，异常厌恶反应是多种精神病理学中常见的跨诊断特征。研究结果支持了iVRET在厌恶情绪管理方面的临床相关性，为iVRET更广泛的治疗应用提供了证据，并指出在这个新兴领域需要进行更有针对性和更全面的研究。
