On the 17th April 2018,
I gave an invited talk at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Czech
Republic as part of the ‘Informatics Colloquium’ series. The title of my
presentation was ‘Virtual Reality Assessment for Examining Functional Neurological
Symptoms’. The presentation provided an overview of the initial results
obtained through the project which was awarded by the Ministry of Health of CR
Research Programme. Functional neurological symptoms (FNS) are somatic symptoms
that still remain poorly understood. Their diagnosis is made by exclusion of
organic cause and therefore does not provide any specific cues for the
subsequent treatment.
This presentation evaluated
immersive virtual reality as a potential therapeutic tool for a treatment of
functional neurological symptoms. The first part examined the effects of
immersive virtual reality intervention on changes in autonomic arousal in FNS
(in both healthy subjects and patients) by introducing emotional stress. The
effect of immersion manipulation on changes in emotional reactivity to stress
inducing stimuli is assessed by measuring skin conductance and heart rate
variability. The second part examined how biofeedback affects immersive virtual
reality intervention on effective connectivity patterns in patients with FNS.
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