Biomarker-driven Adaptive Virtual Reality Stimulation for ASD Interventions

Agency
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades
Agencia Estatal de Investigación

Lab
AT3

Area
#Presence

Years
2021 – 2024

Grant Number
PID2020-116422RB-C21

Partners
Fundació de Docencia y Recerca Mútua Terrasa (MTA)- Grup Salut mental Infanto Juvenil
Red Cenit

The general objective of the ADAPTEA project is to design, develop and test a biomarker-driven adaptive virtual reality system (BAVR) for ASD interventions, using a computational psychiatry paradigm based on psychophysiological and behavioral biomarkers while exposed to complex social conditions replicas using virtual reality interfaces.

The central hypothesis of this project states that biomarker-driven adaptive virtual reality (BAVR) stimulation can be a useful clinical tool for ASD interventions. This new paradigm proposed by ADAPTEA has not only the potential to lead to impact contributions in ASD related clinical areas, but also provides notable methodological contributions.

Although some of the tools (VR, biosignal treatments, machine learning) to be used in ADAPTEA are known and well established, the interest of the project is not phenomenological but methodological. The proposed tool (BAVR), guided by a computational psychiatry paradigm based on bayesian theories of autism constitutes a radical new shift in the treatment of ASD and will face complex technical and methodological challenges extremely relevant for the area of neurodevelopmental disorders in general, and more concretely, for ASD.