Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Army Plans 'Virtual Afghanistan' to Help Treat PTSD

ORLANDO, Fla. (Dec. 2) -- An Army-funded institute that has used virtual reality to help treat traumatized veterans of the war in Iraq is now moving to build an even more detailed virtual world of Afghanistan.

The Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, which conducted pioneering work using virtual reality to treat those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, recently received funding from the U.S. Army to build a new, advanced computer program based on Afghanistan, according to Dr. Albert "Skip" Rizzo, a research scientist at the institute.

Virtual Afghanistan is expected to be even more realistic -- and detailed -- than the Iraq computer program. "We've got literally hundreds of stories people have told in therapy about where and what occurred to them and what happened to them," Rizzo told AOL News in an interview here. "That's stuff we didn't have when we started."

Sharon Weinberger Contributor

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