Virtual Reality for the Treatment of Body Image Disturbances in Eating and Weight Disorders

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging simulative technology that provides the individual with the feeling of “being inside” a synthetic environment generated by computer graphics. The sense of presence and emotional engagement offered by VR can be a powerful tool for personal change because it provides a high level of personal efficacy and self-reflectiveness. More, VR can be considered an embodied technology for its ability of modifying the experience of the body: using VR, subjects can experience digital bodies as if they were their own body. For these features, several VR applications have been developed to be used in the treatment of body image disturbances, and their effectiveness has been positively tested in case studies, as well as in non-controlled and controlled trials. The rationale behind many of these trials is the hypothesis that individuals with EDs may reflect a deficit in the processing and integration of multisensory bodily representations and signals that alters the way the body is “experienced” and “remembered”. In this view, VR as a synthetic egocentric experience, can be used in a sensory training to unlock the body memory (body image rescripting protocol) by increasing the contribution of new egocentric/internal somatosensory information directly related to the existing allocentric memory. The emerging field of multisensory bodily illusion may further improve the actual protocols.