Positive Technology in the Metaverse: Experiential Technologies Meet Mental Wellbeing

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-378-8_2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Metaverse; Mental Health; Virtual Reality; Augmented Reality; Anxiety Disorders; Eating and Weight Disorders; Pain Management; Psychosis; Embodied Medicine

Abstract

The Metaverse is a big step forward for the Internet that lets people live in a multisensory digital world anywhere and at any time, giving them a “deep feeling of presence.” On the one hand, these features are attracting tech companies and multinational corporations that are interested in the economic and commercial potential of the metaverse. On the other hand, they are creating new opportunities for well-being: the Metaverse can be a “positive technology.” This chapter will look at how Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), the two core metaverse technologies, can be used to improve mental well-being. First, it will talk about their clinical results in different clinical pathologies where VR and AR are better than other treatments and have long-lasting effects that work in the real world. More, it will discuss about their clinical results in different clinical pathologies where VR and AR are better than other treatments and have long-lasting effects that work in the real world. Lastly, it will use recent discoveries in neuroscience to explain why metaverse technologies can be very effective for assessing mental health and treating it: our brain and the metaverse use the same fundamental process, termed “embodied simulations,” to function. As a result, the metaverse could serve as the foundation for a new field of study defined as “embodied medicine,” the purpose of which is to use experiental technologies to repair malfunctioning brain simulations and improve people’s mental health and wellness.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Giuseppe Riva
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/02/19
TI  - Positive Technology in the Metaverse: Experiential Technologies Meet Mental Wellbeing
BT  - Proceedings of the Positive Technology International Conference 2023 Positive Technology: Possible Synergies between Emerging Technologies and Positive Psychology (PT 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 7
EP  - 30
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-378-8_2
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-378-8_2
ID  - Riva2024
ER  -