We heard lots of great things about how VR could change our perception of another person,
which has, you know, fascinating implications.
But can VR also change our perception about ourselves?
Yes. We have used a paradigm whereby,
as I was saying before,
that you can change the virtual body to be whatever you want.
But also, why not have a body that represents you?
So we can make virtual bodies that really do look like you,
and then another virtual body you can also inhabit or embody.
So the idea of this goes back to the kind of
well-known thing that you can often get
better advice to a friend than you can to yourself.
So a friend comes to you with a problem,
immediately you can say,
oh yeah yeah, this is a solution,
because it's, like, it's not your problem.
But when it's your problem,
you have your own typical ways of thinking about it,
and often you get trapped into, like,
a circular loop where you can't get out of seeing the problem from your own perspective.
But of course, it's your own perspective that led you into the problem.
So what we do in this series of work that we're still doing right
now is that you get embodied in a copy of yourself.
So you look in the mirror,
you see a reflection of yourself.
I mean, it's still a virtual body,
but it really looks like you.
And then sitting across the other side of the room is someone else.
Could be whoever you want,
but for one series of experiments we chose Sigmund Freud.
So sitting on the other side of the room is Sigmund Freud.
And then you're told,
describe your problem to Sigmund Freud.
And so Sigmund Freud sitting over there,
he's nodding while you are talking, and so on.
You say," Dr. Freud, I have a problem.
My boss treats me really bad and I don't know what to do."
Then everything goes wavy and then you are in the body of Sigmund Freud.
And now you look down at yourself,
you see the Freud body.
You look in the mirror,
you see Freud's body in the mirror,
and as you move, the Freud body moves.
But across the other side of the room is you,
and you hear and see yourself say, "Ah,
Dr. Freud, I'm having trouble my boss blah blah blah."
Now, as Dr. Freud,
you can respond and say, "Well,
have you done anything to upset him?"
And then you're back in your own body.
Again, you look down, you see your own body,
and now you hear Dr. Freud.
It's your voice, but it's disguised.
It's disguised, so it doesn't really sound like you,
and he says to you, "Have you done anything to upset your boss?"
And then you say, "No, I haven't done anything."
And then you're back in Freud's body.
Well, think about it some more,
and then you go back in your body, you say,
"Actually, there was one thing I did that did really upset him."
And so somehow, having the other perspective of the other person,
you're able to kind of get outside the loop and see things from a different perspective.
And this works very well,
and actually right now we're doing a big study with more serious problems.
Also, in the University of Oxford,
Professor Daniel Freeman is using the same idea to work with people who have paranoia.
So we don't know the results of those experiments yet, but they're ongoing.
Earlier, last year some time,
we used the same technique,
or a similar technique,
not exactly the same,
with Professor Chris Brewin and Dr. John King here at UCL,
where we dealt with the issue of depression,
particularly people who find it hard to think of positive things about themselves.
The way this worked is that you're in
the virtual reality with a virtual body and across the other side of the room,
you see a child crying.
Then, you're instructed about some kind of soothing things to say to
that child to give
the child encouragement and to make positive statements towards the child.
So you spend a few minutes saying good things,
nice things to the child and gradually the child stops crying.
Then in the second phase,
you are in the body of the child and you see and hear
your previous virtual body giving encouragement, saying nice things.
Now, it's saying it to you.
In a way, we've broken this loop for people who
can't give positive encouragement to themselves.
They have done, OK.
It's kind of a trick that they've done it in another body,
but then nevertheless they've done it.
In an experimental trial that we did,
that's now been published,
we found that using that technique actually did
help people with depression to improve their mood positively.
This is how we've used the same idea of embodiment in
a more counseling and therapeutic context and this is work,
which is still ongoing.
Dr Sylvia Xueni PanLecturer, Department of Computing
Dr Marco GilliesSenior Lecturer
