ArticleJournal of clinical medicine2019
The Equivalence between Virtual and Real Feared Stimuli in a Phobic Adult Sample: A Neuroimaging Study.
Article in Journal of clinical medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of workspace wall colors on productivity and emotion via immersive VR and physiological data.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Affective Response Dataset for Virtual Workspaces: Based on Color Stimuli and Multimodal Physiological Signals.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Neuronal Activity during Exposure to Specific Phobia through fMRI: Comparing Therapeutic Components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Changes in Brain Activation through Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy with Exposure to Virtual Reality: A Neuroimaging Study of Specific Phobia.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Article
- Neuronal Correlates of Small Animal Phobia in Human Subjects through fMRI: The Role of the Number and Proximity of Stimuli.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Spider Phobia: Neural Networks Informing Diagnosis and (Virtual/Augmented Reality-Based) Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy-A Narrative Review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Review
- Virtual Reality in the Assessment, Understanding and Treatment of Mental Health Disorders.Journal of clinical medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The clinical use of virtual reality (VR) has proven its efficacy, especially when used as an exposure technique. A prominent property of VR's utility is its equivalence with the reality it represents. In this study, we explored this equivalence in a clinical context using neuroimaging. A sample of 32 adults with specific phobias (i.e., to cockroaches, spiders, or lizards) was divided into two groups: One was exposed to phobic stimuli using VR and the other was exposed to real phobic images (RI). We used brain activations as a dependent measure, focusing specifically on brain areas usually associated with fear processing. Whole-brain analysis detected higher activations for RI in the hippocampus, occipital, and calcarine areas. A specific analysis of the amygdala and insula also detected higher activations and extensions in response to RI, but VR stimuli also activated those areas in a significant manner. These results suggest that even in those cases where RI stimuli activate all of the brain's fear-processing circuits, VR stimuli do so as well. This implies that VR can be useful as an exposure technique similar to RI and applied as more than a mere training mechanism.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.