Bringing Exposure Therapy to Real-Life Context With Augmented Reality
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03649347. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
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Official title
Bringing Exposure Therapy for Animal Phobias to Real-Life Context With Augmented Reality
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
In this patented project, U.S. Patent No. 10,839,707, the investigators will develop an augmented reality exposure therapy method for arachnophobia, and fear of snakes, to test in the clinic. The platform will include a software that allows the clinician (psychiatrist/therapist) to position virtual objects in the real environment of the patient with the above mentioned phobias while the patient is wearing the augmented reality (AR) device. Then the clinician will lead the patient through steps of exposure therapy to the fear objects. The investigators will then measure the impact of treatment and compare to before treatment measures of fear of the phobic object. Exposure therapy is the most evidence-based treatment for specific phobias, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The core principle is patient's exposure to the feared objects/situations guided by a clinician. For example, in arachnophobia, patient is exposed to pictures of spiders printed or on a computer screen- or if available, view of a real tarantula in the office. Gradually, patient tolerates viewing/approaching the spider from a closer distance, and fear response extinguishes. The clinician has a crucial role in signaling safety to the patient, as well as providing support and coaching. This treatment is limited by multiple factors: 1) limited access to feared objects/situations in the clinic, 2) even when feared objects are available, they are not diverse (e.g. different types and colors of spiders), which limits generalization of safety learning, 3) when available, clinician has very limited control over behaviors of the feared objects (e.g. spider/snake), 4) safety learning is limited to the clinic office context, and contextualization of safety learning to real life experiences is left to the patient to do alone, which often does not happen. This is specifically important in conditions such as PTSD, where there is cumulative evidence for impaired contextualization as a key neurobiological underpinning. 5) Lack of geographical access to experts in exposure therapy, especially for PTSD, in rural areas.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT03649347
- Recruitment status
- Terminated
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 25 participants
Conditions and interventions
Conditions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 18 Years to 45 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Aug 29, 2018
- Primary completion
- Mar 31, 2020
- Completion
- Mar 31, 2020
- Last update posted
- Apr 18, 2022
2018 – 2020
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wayne State U Department of Psychiatry | Detroit | Michigan | 48197 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT03649347, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Apr 18, 2022 · Synced Sep 5, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT03649347 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.