Daily Archives: April 19, 2017

Chris Merkle had no intention of revisiting the traumatic events he experienced in war. After three tours in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, there was plenty to process but his concern was moving forward, not revisiting the past. "I'm a Marine," he says now, from his home in Los Angeles. "We're taught to do our jobs, to accomplish our mission. We're not going to sit around and talk about our feelings." He'd come here, to Dr. Albert "Skip" Rizzo's lab at the Institute of Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, after months of working with a therapist with little result. "She was a great therapist," Merkle says, "but she couldn't do anything if I wasn't willing to talk about my experience. And I just wasn't."

At the time, Merkle was struggling with challenges he believed were a result of his present situation, not his past experiences. "It's really hard coming home," he says. "Most of us joined right out of high school. My sense of identity was being part of this group, working for the greater good. When you come home, you lose that." There were practical challenges as well. "I was trained as a machine gunner. There are no machine gunner jobs in the U.S. I didn't want that to be my job, but it was the only thing I had been trained to do." Each vet deals with these challenges in different ways. For Merkle, it was anger. "The slightest thing would send me off. It just got worse and worse."

Merkle reached out to the Department of Veteran's Affairs and was eventually connected with a therapist who suggested he try Virtual Reality-based exposure therapy. Unsurprisingly, Merkle wasn't thrilled about the idea. In VR exposure therapy, a patient enters a virtual re-enactment of a traumatic event. In the case of many vets like Merkle, these events are really multiple traumas, graphic battle scenes imbued with violence, confusion, helplessness, and grief. Simply discussing such a charged scenario is a tall order for most trauma survivors. VR-based exposure therapy goes one step further: the patient is an active participant in the scene, completely immersed in the traumatic incident. Merkle says, "You're going back to the worst day of your life and living it over and over again."

When traumatic event occurs, the brain is overwhelmed with stimuli and everything associated with that trauma (sights, smells, sounds) attaches to the memory like a leech. This happens on a physiological level; the phrase "neurons that fire together, wire together" is an oversimplified but useful way of describing the phenomenon. Under the right conditions, neural firings strengthen the synaptic connections in the brain. It is the neurobiological process that allows us to learn from experience. When it's a traumatic event, however, this process is heightened dramatically; instead of a gradual learning process, the sensory details and the traumatic event itself become almost one and the same, imprinted on an individual's neural circuitry.

These imprints are essential to understanding and treating trauma. The sights, sounds and smells that were present at the time of traumatic incident become embedded as part of the memory. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to encounter one of the associated sensory details and not recall the entirety of the trauma. It's one of the reasons hypervigilance is such a common symptom of PTSD a trigger for the traumatic experience could be lurking around any corner, in otherwise innocuous places.

Complicating matters in treating trauma, is that the triggers (or "cues," as Rizzo calls them) are often subconscious. These can prompt a physical or emotional response without the individual realizing why the reaction is occurring. "Stored memories aren't always in the conscious mind," Rizzo says, "a person might only realize something is a cue when that cue appears outside of the traumatic event." I suggest an example: When I was in my early twenties, I needed two emergency surgeries that resulted in a long hospitalization. Six months later, I had an allergy test that required a number of small needle pricks on my arm. Though they didn't hurt in the slightest, I remember sobbing uncontrollably. "Yes!" Rizzo says, "logically, you know you're not back in the hospital. But that cue [being pricked by a needle] tells your brain otherwise."

Exposure therapy, a subset of cognitive behavior therapy, aims to reduce the charge around these cues. Traditionally, exposure therapy ranges from writing a narrative to role-playing the traumatic incident. The premise is the same for any exposure therapy - talking (or writing) through the traumatic event with a trained professional allows a patient to decrease the charge around these cues, revising them in a safe environment with a trained professional.

The key to understanding why exposure therapy works so well in treating PTSD, Rizzo says, is recognizing the instinctive human response to experiencing trauma: avoidance. As with most psychological and physiological responses to stimuli, trauma evolved to protect us. It's the brain's way of making very sure we do everything possible to avoid a similar incident. If the last time you awoke to the smell of smoke, your house was on fire, the smell of smoke in any situation is going to trigger an instinct to flee.

Exposure therapy is designed to, well, expose an individual to those triggering cues in a safe environment. VR-based exposure therapy is an extension of that: completely immersive exposure. That level of exposure is serious business, something Rizzo doesn't take lightly. "There's no question," he says. "This is hard medicine for hard problems."

Chris Merkle didn't feel quite ready for hard medicine. After completing the intake procedures, he was asked to pick a traumatic event to focus on over the course of the 10-week program. He picked a story he thought would be "horrifying to someone on the outside," but one that he didn't think he personally had a lot of trauma around. "I thought I was going to game the game," he says. Merkle picked what he calls his "longest day." "I figured it would give me a lot to talk about without having to go into too many details."

"Avoidance is the biggest challenge to overcome in treating trauma," says Rizzo. It is also the thing that VR therapy is arguably the most effective in minimizing.

Rizzo's team has created 14 virtual worlds from which clinicians can add details specific to the patient's experience. Without VR goggles, the screen looks much like a video game. With VR goggles, a fake gun that reverberates as a real machine gun would when being used, and the brain's ability to fill in gaps based on what is simulated, the experience is utterly immersive.

The event Merkle described, the one Rizzo's team recreated virtually, took place in Iraq in 2003. "We had been rolling through the country, liberating small towns [from the Iraqi opposition] and we reached Nasiriyah," he says. "We were really trying to close the distance to Baghdad. One unit would stay and hold the roadside while another unit rolled through to the next town."

But there was only one road to get there, and Iraqi forces were doing everything in their power to block it. It was the first time Merkle's unit had faced strong, coordinated resistance. Merkle describes the scene: "I was watching a town under siege, watching Marines dying, it was just... a pathway of death. It was just this horrific scene of all these bodies. I mean, they're humans."

While the bullets were flying, Merkle's unit was hardly moving. "It was this small two-lane highway and there was a massive military unit up ahead," he says. "It was like sitting on the freeway on the back of a dump truck, bumper-to-bumper traffic, without any armor, getting shot at. I'm firing back, seeing lives lost, taking lives, all in this, like, war carpool. It was so surreal."

From the outside, it can sound like what Rizzo has set up is essentially a first-person shooter video game. Rizzo wants to make the distinction very clear. "There is no simulation of killing in VR therapy," he says. "We are not desensitizing people to killing."

Instead, VR therapy addresses both the cognitive part of trauma as well as the behavioral. The patient discusses each cue with the clinician as they encounter it. This is a slow process. "Say someone was driving down a road and what looked like a piece of trash on the side of the road was actually an IED," says Rizzo. "In VR, they might just sit in the humvee on the side of the road for the first few sessions. The clinician will ask, 'what do you see, what do you smell, how does this feel?' The ultimate goal is to allow the patient to see something on the side of the road in real life and not react as though it's a potential bomb."

He continues: "The patient might drive down that road 20 times before the IED goes off. And before it does, we ask the patient, 'is it okay if we activate the IED now?' When the explosion comes, the patient is prepared." The association of that loud noise is taking place where the patient knows they are safe and they can talk about anything that comes up for them in that safe environment. "Ultimately, instead of the cues being paired with the original traumatic event," Rizzo says, "they're paired with what's actually happening now." The patient's cognition around the cues is changing. Talking with a professional as all that information is reprocessed offers the opportunity for behavioral change as well.

This distinction is best illustrated by a new group of patients using VR exposure therapy: sexual assault survivors. A study taking place at Emory University with sexual assault survivors suffering from PTSD is using VR to simulate the non-threatening cues associated with the incident. Being in the location where an assault occurred, be it a bar, an ally, a bedroom, can trigger memories of the trauma itself. VR therapy allows a patient to walk through these charged locations in a safe environment, and talk about the cues as they arise.

Through VR process, the patient and the clinician are able to talk about every detail leading up to and after the trauma because as that "fire together, wire together" phrase reminds us in the brain, the details around the trauma are often inextricably intertwined with the traumatic incident itself. By confronting the traumatic incident in a safe environment, they are creating new memories associated with the cues. In short, it's giving the cues that trigger the memory of the traumatic event something new to wire with: a safe experience.

It also establishes a rapport between clinician and patient, allowing the patient to feel more comfortable discussing the part of the traumatic event that isn't simulated. Critics of VR therapy sometimes claim that the device puts a barrier between the patient and the clinician, but that hasn't been Rizzo's experience. "I've had patients say they think I can better understand what they went through because I'm literally watching them experience it; I'm talking about every detail with them."

There are clinicians who have concerns about the safety of VR, either as therapeutic or recreational tool. Neurophysicist Mayank Mehta at the University of California-Los Angeles Center for Neurophysics has yet-unanswered questions about the longterm effects of VR on the brain. He compared the brain activity of a rat walking down a path in real life vs. a rat walking down an exact replica of the path in VR. "What we found is the effect on the hippocampus is totally different in real life than it is in Virtual Reality. Sixty percent of the neurons in the hippocampus shut down in VR and the ones that don't are totally scrambled." Mehta hopes that VR will be able to be safely used as a therapeutic tool at some point, he stresses the need for longitudinal studies examining the impact of VR on the brain.

The hardest part of taking in the devastation around him in Nasiriyah, Merkle says, was his inability to help those in need. Behind him on the road, he could see Marines taking fire, dying in his wake. "I'm thinking, we've had all of this training for running and fighting and instead of helping, I'm going to die sitting on my ass getting shot at."

By walking through every part of what happened that day, Rizzo and Merkle were able to identify not just the trauma cues but also the deeper roots of Merkle's anger. "The worst thing in the world to feel, especially for a Marine, is helpless," says Merkle. "We're taught to take action." Without VR therapy, however, Merkle may not have ever realized how many layers of trauma he experienced that day in Nasiriyah.

"The mind is powerful. I thought I was giving them a story I didn't need to work on but it turns out that it was something I really, really needed to work on," he says. The process also taught Merkle the importance of facing his vulnerability and of talking about the challenges and traumas he encountered throughout his tours. "If you are a little kid and you burn your hand on a stove and you never see another stove, you're going to be scared of stoves forever," he says. "But if someone walks back to the stove with you, shows you that it's turned off, and provides a comfortable, safe situation for you to interact with the stove, that fear goes away."

VR allowed Merkle to go from avoiding discussing his war-related trauma to working with other vets at the VA. It also gave him a new career path: he's now pursuing a degree in psychology. But there's no easy cure for PTSD, and it's something he still has to work on. "I thought the hard work was out of the way, but that wasn't the case," he says. When he began working with other vets, he found that he was listening to stories that recalled his own trauma and he needed help processing that, so he went back to talk therapy. Before VR, however, he would have avoided anything that made him recall those experiences. Instead, he's fully involved in his work at the VA as well as Team Red White & Blue, and organization that helps vets connect back home. RWB, Merkle says, has helped him address some of the issues that were plaguing him upon his return: how to retain the part of his identity that is a Marine but move on and away from the trauma of war.

Now, he goes on camping trips with other vets, where they can tell their stories and support each other. This community understands him in a way other people can't. "We were up in the woods and it was raining and everyone was sleeping in cabins. But it's hard for me to sleep in that situation, even though I know these guys are my buddies and not the enemy. So I went outside and slept in a hammock. They totally understood. They get it."

"I want other vets to know that you can have a life after war," he says. "That you don't have to run from the things that make you vulnerable; you can embrace them." That doesn't mean the work is over, as Merkle's situation illustrates. But he's found purpose in helping vets navigate the same challenges he experienced. His skills as a machine gunner may not lead to a career, but his experience working through trauma might. "I've always wanted to help people, that's where I find satisfaction," Merkle says, "But it's like those safety announcements on the airplanes you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help someone else with theirs." Thanks to VR-therapy and his own hard work, Merkle says he's less focused on his PTSD. Now, he knows something else is possible. He calls it "Post-Traumatic Growth."

Sign up for our newsletter to receive breaking news directly in your inbox.

Go here to read the rest:

Can Virtual Reality Help Cure PTSD? - RollingStone.com

One of the 3D destinations is Neuschwanstein Castle, built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the 1800s.

A new Google Earth Virtual Reality (VR) feature allows users to enter any address whether it's grandma's house or a 19th-century castle in Germany and fly over it in 3D with a VR headset.

When Google Earth VR debuted, people could virtually visit a number of popular tourist destinations, including the Hoover Dam in Nevada and the Matterhorn in Switzerland. They could even gaze at the nooks and crannies of the Colosseum in Rome, an archaeological marvel.

But now, people can choose their own destinations, as long as they know the address or name of the location. [25 Strangest Sights on Google Earth]

"People want to quickly find and revisit the places that mean the most to them, whether it's a childhood home or favorite vacation spot," Joanna Kim, a product manager at Google Earth VR, wrote in a blog post today (April 18). Now, users can type an address or the name of a location, and visit it in 3D with a 3D headset system, Kim wrote.

Sightseers can also visit 27 handpicked locations that are now available on Google Earth VR, including Neuschwanstein Castle (the inspiration for the castle in Disney's "Sleeping Beauty"), Table Mountain in South Africa and the Perito Moreno Glacier (Glaciar Perito Moreno) in Argentina.

Google Earth VR is now available for Oculus Rift users who have Oculus Touch controllers. The application is free at the Oculus Store and Steam.

Previous 3D maps created by Google Earth include street views of the Amazon rainforest; the 18,192-foot-high (5,545 meters) high Mount Everest base camp; and Rio de Janeiro, the city that hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Original article on Live Science.

Read the original:

Google Earth Virtual Reality Will Take You to Any Address in the World - Live Science

Idaho 0Updated at 4:11 pm, April 18th, 2017 By: Lacey Darrow, KIVI We Matched

BOISE Idaho State Police is turning to the digital age to help recruit potential troopers.

Their new virtual reality app gives those interested a 360-degree view of what its really like to work and live in the Gem State.

We know there are ISP candidates out there that use this type of technology to search for new career opportunities, ISP Captain Vern Hancock said. We want to have a way to reach these high-quality young men and women.

The goal, to engage a national demographic to get the most qualified and competent candidates, many of whom may not have ever thought of Idaho as part of their next move.

The kids in Texas or Arkansas, the only thing that they know about Boise is the blue turf and potatoes, said David Cleverdon with 360 immersive. This lets let them feel connected, and thats what VR does.

Producers of the app say ISP is likely the first organization in the country to use virtual reality to recruit potential troopers, and not only is it cost effective, its easy to use.

You can use something as simple as a headset which is about 35 dollars to view the content, or you can simply hold your phone out and explore the ISP, Cleverdon said.

They said its a memorable experience which includes commentary from four ISP officers and highlights the community they support protect and defend. It also gives users a real life view in the eyes of what it would really be like to be an ISP trooper.

If you would like to check it out, just head to Google Play or The App Store and search join ISP.

This story was originally published by fellow CNN affiliate KIVI. It is used here with permission.

CNN Wire and the CNN Video Affiliate Network is an online syndication service providing text and video versions of CNN's award-winning news coverage. Articles featured include reporting on world news, politics, finance, health, entertainment and technology.

Images in the news

Related Stories

See the article here:

ISP using virtual reality to recruit troopers - East Idaho News

Walk with Southern Rockhopper, King, Magellanic, and Gentoo Penguins on a remote island, in a new short film produced with Visualise for BirdLife Internationals Protect a Penguin global campaign, to raise awareness that over half of the worlds penguins are threatened with extinction.Watch the video now

Amidst the sound of trumpeting parental calls, with wind buffeting against its fluffy feathers, a King Penguin chick walks right up to you and stares you in the eye. You duck your head as an albatross soars overhead, whilst another nests on a rock ledge just above you. As penguins squabble for a shower you feel almost splashed by water, and you sense the exposure as you peer over a cliff and watch a line of Southern Rockhoppers Eudyptes chrysocome jump up the steep slope to their colony. When you take off the virtual reality headset, with a bit of a dizzy wobble, you feel like you have seen the world from the perspective of a penguinand its a tough realisation.

BirdLife has worked with virtual reality producer, Visualise, to create Walk with Penguins, an engaging 3D 360 short nature filmthe first of its kindto bring the daily challenges and lives of remote penguin colonies to you, and to raise awareness about threats to penguins, the second-most threatened group of seabirds (after albatrosses).

You can watch online in high-quality 360 video on YouTube (embedded belowclick to view full-screen), or for the full experience, watch via the YouTube app or Google Cardboard app, using a cheap cardboard frame that allows you to use your phone as a virtual reality headset. The only thing that is missing is the smell of a real colony

Despite being loved the world over, over half of the worlds penguins are threatened with extinction (ten out of 18 species) due to competition with fisheries, bycatch, marine pollution, disease, habitat disturbance and climate change. Urgent action is needed to better protect them, but public awareness of their situation is low, so on 10 April, we launched our campaign Protect a Penguin.

Richard Grimmett, Director of Conservation, BirdLife International, said: BirdLife Partners across the globe are already working to tackle some of the threats to penguins, but the size of the challenge demands that efforts are redoubled. Using 3D 360 film, we can get people closer to penguins and give people that magical feeling of being with themand ultimately that can lead to a greater support for their conservation.

During the five-month project to capture penguins in their native habitat, the Visualise production team travelled to the Falkland Islands in November 2016 (during the breeding season) and filmed incredible scenes using the Google Jump stereoscopic camera system in 3D 360, which provides unfettered, intimate action with penguins and their offspring.

Filming proved a major challenge, using untested camera rigs on precipitous cliff faces and in remote environments with no infrastructure. The team had to balance the necessity of getting near to the penguins, to ensure great 360 shots, without upsetting the birds in their natural habitat, and the net result is one of the worlds first nature films shot using 3D 360 technologiesnever before has the action of penguins been captured in such immersive detail.

Will McMaster, Head of Virtual Reality at Visualise said: We have loved working with BirdLife and the penguins they are supporting on this project. This film is one of the first nature documentaries created in stereo 360. While most 360 film is shot monoscopic, and therefore has no depth, stereo 360 means that the viewer can see the physical depth of the scene. This means that audiences will be able to feel even more like they're there, like they could almost reach out and touch the penguins, rocks and the sea. We hope this unique level of immersion will provide an emotional connection with audiences and generate greater support for the campaign.

As the sun sets on the penguin colony within which you stand, and you learn of their plight through the voice over, you cant help but feel an emotional connection, said Grimmett.

See the original post here:

Walk with penguins in ground-breaking virtual reality video - BirdLife International

Zabdiel Avivesflew across New York, gliding over and around buildings on the landscape but the 12-year-old boy only had totravel about a dozen miles fromhis Maywood homefor the experience.

He was one of the first Chicagoansto test Birdly, a full-body virtual reality flight simulator set up last weekat the Field Museum one that could come permanently to the museum later this year.

The simulator lets users experience soaring through a city like a bird, flapping their wings and feeling the wind in their face. It felt realenough to make an impact on Avives.

"It felt like I was falling," hesaid as he hopped off the ride, his hand clutching his chest. "I was scared during some of it."

As usersnavigate the landscape shown in their headset, a screen next to the machinelets others see what the flyeris experiencing.

Flying into someof the buildings transports usersto anothervideo experience: Colliding with a structure marked King Kong, for example, triggers a shift to black and white images similar to those in the classic movie, along with those of the New York of that time with planes fighting the beast.

For now, Birdly users can fly over New York or San Francisco, but Chicago might be in the works, as well as experiences featuring dinosaurs and underwater scenes.

The device was designed by a Swiss company called Somniacs; it's being distributed in North America by Evanston-based D3D Cinema.

D3D's main business is building and upgrading theaters formuseums across the U.S., including at the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry. But D3D also producescontent, like the Field Museum's "Waking the T. rex: The Story of SUE." It would also produceBirdly's Chicago simulation and other new landscapes for flying-machine clientsin the U.S.

Don Kempf, a former history teacher, founded D3D in 2009 as a sister company to his Giant Screen Films, whichhas produced films including "Michael Jordan to the Max" and "Mysteries of China."

The Field Museum is currently showing the Giant Screen Films-distributed "Earthflight 3D," filmed from the viewpoint of birds in flight. When Kempf learned of Birdly, he thought the machine would be a good companion.

"We quickly realized it was a great synergistic fit between the two companies," he said. "Not only are we very active between the museum and zoo and aquarium spaces, but we also have a technical team at D3D Cinema proficient in system integration that can very easily work to install, train and serve as support maintenance and the like."

The Birdly simulator costs $189,000, including installation and training; short-term rentals and long-term leases are also available. Museums or other potential clients could charge users $8 to $10 per ride. Billboards and banners within the game can be used for advertisements for museumsto gain additional revenue, D3Dsaid.

D3D showed the machine at South by Southwestlast month, and has permanent installations at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh and the Tech Museum of Innovation in Silicon Valley.

The Field Museum is working to get on that list by the end of the year, said Megan Williams, the museum's director of business enterprises.

She said the museum has been working for six months to bring in aBirdly unit for an exhibition.The demo Thursday was a hit with visitors, she said.

"They were thrilled, from children to full-grown adults," she said. "It's absolutely magical watching people and listening to their reactions."

Cheryl V. Jackson is a freelance writer. Twitter@cherylvjackson

The rest is here:

Flap your wings and fly with Birdly, a full-body virtual reality flight simulator - Chicago Tribune