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Physiology-based virtual reality training for social skills in schizophrenia

Award Number: R33MH106748
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 03/01/2016
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 05/31/2024

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Physiology-based virtual reality training for social skills in schizophrenia - DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Social impairments are core features of schizophrenia that lead to poor outcome. Social skills and competence improve quality of life and protect against stress-related exacerbation of symptoms, while supporting resilience, interpersonal interactions, and social affiliation. To improve outcome, we must remediate social deficits. Existing psychosocial interventions are moderately effective but the effort-intensive nature (high burden), low adherence, and weak transfer of skills to everyday life present significant hurdles toward recovery. Thus, there is a dire need to develop effective, engaging and low-burden social interventions for people with schizophrenia that will result in better compliance rates and functional outcome. We will test the effectiveness of a novel adaptive virtual reality (VR) intervention in improving targeted social cognitive function (social attention as indexed by eye scanning patterns) in individuals with schizophrenia. VR technology offers a flexible alternative to conventional therapies, with several advantages, including a simplified and low-stress social interaction environment with targeted opportunities to simulate, exercise and reinforce basic elements of social skills in a very wide range of realistic scenarios, and to repea exposure to naturalistic situations from multiple angles. Our desktop VR `game' is designed as an `intelligent' system that adaptively adjusts the difficulty of social training tasks based on participant's physiological, eye tracking and performance data in real time. Such dynamic feedback-based, `closed-loop' VR supports and enhances training because it adjusts and personalizes the learning environment in real time for each participant so that he/she always learns at an optimal arousal and attentional state. Furthermore, the VR environment can potentially simulate any social scenarios, which allows the participants to exercise social skills n a wide variety of situations. Such simulation exercises can help generalize learned skills to everyday life. The R21 phase will aim to implement the social intervention VR task, test its efficacy on improving social attention (target) in schizophrenia, and determine an optimal `dose'. We hypothesize that the VR training will engage social attention and improving social attention will lead to better social outcome. The R33 phase will test the adaptive social VR game against an active control condition in a pilot randomized controlled trial to evaluate the relative efficac of the social VR on enhancing social attention and associated neural circuitry. We will also examine social outcome. If this initial work is successful, our long-term goals are to develop VR social skills training modules that are personalized, accessible, and portable so that social remediation can become an integral part of one's daily life.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = -$201,011 )
2024	2021	VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY	110 21ST AVE S	NASHVILLE	TN	37203	DAVIDSON	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	5	8/15/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	-$201,011
														Subtotal = -$201,011

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2023	2021	VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY	110 21ST AVE S	NASHVILLE	TN	37203	DAVIDSON	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	5	4/26/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $548,071 )
2021	2021	VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, THE	110 21ST AVENUE S STE 800	NASHVILLE	TN	37203	DAVIDSON	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	5	6/8/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$531,979
2021	2019	VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, THE	2301 VANDERBILT PL	NASHVILLE	TN	37235	DAVIDSON	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	3	7/27/2021	EXTENSION WITH OR WITHOUT FUNDS	$16,092
														Subtotal = $548,071

Issue Date FY: 2020 ( Subtotal = $575,136 )
2020	2020	VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, THE	110 21ST AVENUE S STE 800	NASHVILLE	TN	37203	DAVIDSON	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	4	8/5/2020	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$542,645
2020	2019	VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, THE	2301 VANDERBILT PL	NASHVILLE	TN	37235	DAVIDSON	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	11/14/2019	EXTENSION WITH OR WITHOUT FUNDS	$32,491
														Subtotal = $575,136

Issue Date FY: 2019 ( Subtotal = $542,373 )
2019	2019	VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, THE	2301 VANDERBILT PL	NASHVILLE	TN	37235	DAVIDSON	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	9/6/2019	EXTENSION WITH OR WITHOUT FUNDS	$542,373
														Subtotal = $542,373

Grand Total All Awards = $1,464,569

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Physiology-based virtual reality training for social skills in schizophrenia

Award Number: R33MH106748

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 03/01/2016

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 05/31/2024

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