Research

This Vancouver Sun article reports that "A virtual walk in the park may be just what the doctor ordered for chronic pain sufferers. Simon Fraser University associate professor Diane Gromala claims research shows a 3-D stroll in the forest has the power to help people manage chronic pain, sometimes with better results than traditional means such as morphine.

Gromala, head of SFU's Transforming Pain Research Group, is developing a virtual reality technique called "walking meditation." The technique is one of several programs used around the world to aid sufferers of chronic back pain and migraines.

From the ScienceBlogs.com website: "USING an inventive new method in which mice run through a virtual reality environment based on the video game Quake, researchers from Princeton University have made the first direct measurements of the cellular activity associated with spatial navigation. The method will allow for investigations of the neural circuitry underlying navigation, and to a better understanding of how spatial information is encoded at the cellular level.

This ZDNet article reports: "The growth in teleoperation systems has achieved a critical mass that has led researchers to explore ways to collaborate, share facilities and access each others’ telerobotic devices.

Nine research teams from universities and research institutes around the world recently collaborated on the first successful demonstration of multiple biomedical robots operated from different locations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

From the Positive Technology Journal website: "The sensitivity of a virtual reality task to planning and prospective memory impairments: Group differences and the efficacy of periodic alerts on performance."

Neuropsychol Rehabil. 2009 Aug 26;:1-25

"Executive functions have been argued to be the most vulnerable to brain injury. In providing an analogue of everyday situations amenable to control and management virtual reality (VR) may offer better insights into planning deficits consequent upon brain injury.

J Psychoactive Drugs. 2009 Jun;41(2):105-12

Authors: Bordnick PS, Copp HL, Traylor A, Graap KM, Carter BL, Walton A, Ferrer M

Virtual reality (VR) cue environments have been developed and successfully tested in nicotine, cocaine, and alcohol abusers. Aims in the current article include the development and testing of a novel VR cannabis cue reactivity assessment system. It was hypothesized that subjective craving levels and attention to cannabis cues would be higher in VR environments with cannabis cues compared to VR neutral environments.

From this Science Daily article: "What are the causes of illness? How can the effect of medication be improved? Molecular biologists can now gain new insights by the virtual simulations generated with a new type of software.

This Technologie Review article talks about an inexpensive pressure-sensitive pad that can sense multiple inputs at once. From the article: "Now that more and more smart phones and MP3 players have touch-screen interfaces, people have grown accustomed to interacting with gadgets using only taps and swipes of their fingers. But on the 11th floor of a downtown Manhattan building, New York University researchers Ilya Rosenberg and Ken Perlin are developing an interface that goes even further.

This Science Daily article reports how a "visual time machine" offers tourists a momentary view of the past combining augmented reality (AR) content with location awareness on mobile devices. From the article: "A ruined temple, ancient frescos and even a long-dead king have been brought to life by a “visual time machine” developed by European researchers.

From this Wired Science article: " New pilots train on flight simulators before flying their first 757. Scientists experiment on animals before giving their new drug to patients. And fledgling surgeons perform their first few operations on… real people.

Now, a small but growing group of doctors are trying to make surgical training safer by bringing virtual reality into the operating room, and taking the trial-by-error out.

From this Science Daily article: "When you feel you are being touched, usually someone or something is physically touching you and you perceive that your "self" is located in the same place as your body. Neuroscientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, investigated the relationship between bodily self-consciousness and the way touch stimuli are spatially represented in humans. They found that sensations of touch can be felt and mislocalised towards where a "virtual" body is seen. These findings will provide new avenues for the animation of virtual worlds and machines.