This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), under the federal Mental Health Research Grants (CFDA 93.242) program, is for the development and initial testing of an automated e-learning platform for training therapists in exposure therapy for anxiety disorders. The $442,074 award to Parc Innovations LLC will fund a 2-year project from April 2025 to March 2027. The project aims to leverage the team's prior evidence-based exposure therapy training content and...
This $276,000 National Science Foundation Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Project Grant will fund the development of a virtual reality platform to deliver applied behavior analysis therapy to individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Vriends Corp will create software to simulate social skills therapy environments and enable certified therapists to provide remote treatment sessions aligned with applied behavior analysis principles. The envisioned virtual reality clinic aims to improve...
This federal Project Grant award of $426,234, provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) under the Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research program (CFDA 93.865), aims to refine and test a novel virtual reality (VR) parent training tool for caregivers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who exhibit severe destructive behavior. The key products and services to be delivered include: 1) Developing a customizable, in-home VR training...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Engineering awarded the University of Pittsburgh a 3-year, $350,000 Project Grant to develop an innovative closed-loop brain-computer interface (BCI) system for use in exposure therapy for socially fearful teenagers with depression and anxiety. The proposed technology synchronizes electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring with augmented reality (AR) simulations of social fear scenarios, enabling real-time detection of fearful responses and...
This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) provides $544,892 to Children's Hospital Los Angeles to develop and evaluate a novel exposure treatment for social anxiety disorder (SAD) in transition-age youth. The key products/services to be delivered include: Creating an ecologically valid "Very Brief Exposure" (VBE) intervention for SAD, which involves presenting a series of masked images of...
This $2.9 million Defense Health Agency project grant funds research on suicide prevention among military personnel and veterans. The grant supports a multi-site randomized clinical trial through September 2026 to evaluate the efficacy of Written Exposure Therapy for Suicide Prevention compared to treatment as usual. Researchers at Boston University and partner institutions University of Colorado Denver and University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio aim to reduce suicidal thoughts and...
This Project Grant award of $754,267 from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH, CFDA 93.242 Mental Health Research Grants) will fund a hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial of massed prolonged exposure (M-PE) therapy for treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in patients with co-occurring substance use disorder (SUD). The primary objective is to compare the effectiveness of M-PE versus treatment as usual in improving PTSD symptoms and reducing substance use among 168 male and...
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) awarded a $643,978 Project Grant (CFDA 93.279 - Drug Use and Addiction Research Programs) to See Yourself Health LLC, a woman-owned small business, to develop the CHIRON PROJECT - an immersive virtual reality (VR) and telehealth platform. The CHIRON PROJECT aims to address the epidemic of workplace stress and burnout among healthcare workers, which is associated with increased substance use and alcohol consumption. The Phase I project will assess the...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant award of $468,072 supports research at The Trustees of the Stevens Institute of Technology to develop personalized virtual reality interfaces for motor rehabilitation. The goal is to optimize outcomes for individuals with spinal cord or brain injuries undergoing physical therapy. The researchers will examine how impairment levels affect performance, physiological responses, and perceptions during VR training that adapts task difficulty and augmented...
This $2,398,281 Project Grant was awarded by the Defense Health Agency under the Military Medical Research and Development (CFDA 12.420) federal grant program. The grant aims to increase access to evidence-based PTSD treatment for military service members and veterans through a study on Behavioral Health Technician-delivered Written Exposure Therapy (WET). The primary award recipient is the Palo Alto Veterans Institute for Research (PAVIR), a non-profit organization that specializes in medical...
SIMULATED EXPOSURE TRAINER (SET-VR): IMPLEMENTING TARGETED EXPERIENTIAL TRAINING WITH A VIRTUAL PATIENT - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT DESPITE THE EXISTENCE OF NUMEROUS, WELL-ESTABLISHED EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES (EBPS) FOR MENTAL DISORDERS, IT HAS BEEN DIFFICULT TO DISSEMINATE THESE PRACTICES IN COMMUNITY SETTINGS. EXPOSURE THERAPY FOR ANXIETY DISORDERS REPRESENTS ONE OF THE MOST GLARING EXAMPLES OF THIS RESEARCH-TO-PRACTICE GAP. JUST AS PATIENTS ARE ANXIOUS ABOUT APPROACHING THEIR FEARS, THERAPISTS ARE OFTEN RELUCTANT TO USE EXPOSURE THERAPY DUE TO THEIR OWN ANXIOUS BELIEFS THAT IT MAY BE DANGEROUS AND/OR INTOLERABLE FOR PATIENTS, EVEN AFTER RECEIVING SPECIALIZED EXPOSURE TRAINING. EMERGING TRAINING RESEARCH SUGGESTS THE INCLUSION OF TARGETED BEHAVIORAL STRATEGIES (I.E., ROLE PLAY, SELF-EXPOSURE) CAN REDUCE ANXIOUS BELIEFS ABOVE AND BEYOND STANDARD DIDACTIC TRAINING SESSIONS. BY LEVERAGING THE SAME BEHAVIOR CHANGE PRINCIPLES THAT REDUCE PATIENT ANXIETY (I.E., EXPOSURE), BEHAVIORAL STRATEGIES CAN BE TAILORED TO TARGET THERAPISTS' ANXIOUS BELIEFS ABOUT THE TREATMENT (I.E., CONDUCT TRAINING AS "EXPOSURE TO EXPOSURE"). UNFORTUNATELY, CURRENT EXPERIENTIAL TRAINING TASKS HAVE FAILED TO CLOSELY REPLICATE COMMONLY FEARED CLINICAL CONTEXTS, AND AS A RESULT LACK THE NECESSARY POTENCY TO POTENTIALLY OVERCOME THERAPIST-LEVEL BARRIERS FOR UPTAKE AND QUALITY TREATMENT DELIVERY FOLLOWING TRAINING. VIRTUAL REALITY (VR) HAS DEMONSTRATED UTILITY AS A POTENT AND COST- EFFECTIVE APPROACH FOR DELIVERING EXPOSURE. WE PLAN TO INVESTIGATE THE APPLICATION OF VR AS A TAILORED TRAINING TOOL (I.E., VIRTUAL "EXPOSURE TO EXPOSURE" FOR THERAPISTS) CAPABLE OF ENHANCING THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING THAT IS LACKING IN CURRENT EXPOSURE TRAINING INITIATIVES. THE PROPOSED 20-MONTH PHASE I STTR STUDY WILL TEST THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A VR TRAINING PROGRAM DELIVERED ON TWO PLATFORMS (I.E., VR HEADSET AND WEB-BASED) TO ASSESS WHICH PLATFORM PROVIDES THE IDEAL BALANCE OF IMMERSION, USABILITY, TARGET ENGAGEMENT, AND SCALABILITY. THE STUDY TAKES PLACE IN THREE STAGES: 1) INITIAL DEVELOPMENT, 2) ITERATIVE EVALUATION AND DEVELOPMENT TO OPTIMIZE USABILITY, 3) CLINICAL TRAINING TRIAL TO ESTABLISH TARGET ENGAGEMENT. USABILITY AND TARGET ENGAGEMENT INFORMATION FROM THIS PILOT TRIAL WILL SUPPORT A PHASE II STTR PROJECT AIMED AT BUILDING OUT AND BROADLY DISSEMINATING THE VR- ENHANCED TRAINING APPROACH.