Design of a Virtual Reality-Based Neuroadaptive System for Treatment of Arachnophobia

Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, is one of the most common phobias globally that induces anxiety and other mental illness in individuals if remain untreated. Virtual reality (VR)-based exposure therapy (VRET) has recently emerged as a viable solution for treating different phobias. In this endeavor, this work presents a step towards designing an intelligent, neuroadaptive, individualized VRET system (VRSpi) that integrates VR with physiological sensing to provide exposure therapy to individuals with arachnophobia. VRSpi is designed to monitor neural and heart rate physiology in real-time to automatically control the intensity of the fear stimulus in an adaptive manner. We conducted a pilot single-session trial with a cohort of healthy individuals and individuals with moderate fear of spiders to understand the efficacy of our system towards treating arachnophobic individuals. The system has shown the potential for treating arachnophobia.