PsychKnowledgy

What was the culture of the company like? How did people justify the fact that their profits were inversely correlated with the life expectancy of consumers?

Hello! I am a researcher in clinical psychology, and am about to begin a doctorate program with a focus in using virtual reality to create new measurement tools and clinical interventions. I recently heard about your collaboration with Johns Hopkins to create a space at Burning Man for people who are having negative experiences on psychedelics. I am curious whether you might be interested in creating a paradigm to expand this intervention into the virtual realm?

A major advantage of virtual reality is the ability to automatically quantify behaviors and responses to environmental changes that are carefully manipulated by researchers. The HTC Vive enables people to walk around a 15x15" tracking area - imagine if we created a room that could change as users interact with objects. It could also dynamically change according to physiological responses such as heart rate variability or galvanic skin response (stress). They could self-report which drugs they have consumed, and we could measure the impact on cognition and emotion.

Is this something that would be of interest? I was wondering whether such a study could be set up at Bonnaroo or another festival on the East Coast. Or maybe Burning Man could be the best venue. It could provide some interesting data, as the sample of drug users would be diverse with many different substances.

I am interested in exploring the potential of combining virtual reality with psychedelics, and wonder whether this might be a way to establish an empirical base for such research. I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Wow, thank you for the detailed an interesting reply!

You make a good point about the increased level of control in an experimental paradigm, as opposed to recruiting people from a festival. It's also an issue that people may believe they've taken one substance, when in reality it could contain other compounds.

Although one thing I did not convey is that the virtual environment does not have to be chaotic or new. For example, they could start in an environment that is a recreation of the inside of the tent. From there, we could present stimuli that could help calm the person down. VR enables us to "match" the intensity of a psychedelic experience by presenting stimuli that could blend in with the person's hallucinations.

I think you're right, though, that we would need to validate such interventions before presenting them to people at festivals. That way we could mitigate the potential risk of harming the person instead of calming them down.

Thank you again for the interesting perspective on VR and psychedelics!

Wow thank you! This is very encouraging, especially from someone like you, who has such a great grasp of the industry/world of academia.

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