Domestic violence (DV) is a silent, prevalent, serious and preventable human rights abuse. Globally, 38% of all murders of women are committed by a male intimate partner. 30% of women have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetime, with 8% of women over the age of 15 reporting that they have suffered DV in the previous year. Our Solution VRespect.Me is an immersive Virtual Reality experience that puts the DV offender in the place of the victim. The work is based on the very latest scientific research in cognitive neuroscience that has found that immersive Virtual Reality experiences can modify the socioperceptual processes that underlie the aggressive behaviours exhibited by perpetrators of DV. Research shows that abusive men typically have an inability to recognize fear in a woman’s face. But in our study, using the VRespect.Me, male domestic-violence offenders who embodied the verbally abused woman got significantly better at recognizing a woman’s fear. Essentially, they become more empathic. And a lack of empathy is one of the primary causes of domestic violence. VRespect.Me is currently being used to rehabilitate domestic violence offenders in Catalonia. In phase 1 we will: - Demonstrate the prototype to stakeholders across Europe and beyond. - Build a road map to bring the VRespect.Me to the market - Map the stakeholder environment Understand the different purchasing mechanisms in the field of rehabilitation of domestic violence offenders in different European markets - Identify the key target markets, develop a commercial strategy and update the business plan The Market: European governments spend an estimated 72 billion euros on the impact of domestic violence, with the overall cost to society an estimated 256 billion euros. VR is a booming industry, with the VR healthcare market estimated to reach 4billion euros by 2025. With VRespect.Me as our first product, we aim to position Virtual Bodyworks at the forefront of this fast-growing sector.

The environMENTAL project will investigate how some of the greatest global environmental challenges, climate change, urbanisation, and psychosocial stress caused by the COVID-19-pandemic affect mental health over the lifespan. It will identify their underlying molecular mechanisms and develop preventions and early interventions. Leveraging cohort data of over 1.5 million European citizens and patients enriched with deep phenotyping data from large scale behavioural neuroimaging cohorts, we will identify brain mechanisms related to environmental adversity underlying symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress and substance abuse. By linking population and patient data via geo-location to spatiotemporal environmental data derived from remote sensing satellites, climate models, regional-socioeconomic data and digital health applications, our interdisciplinary team will develop a neurocognitive model of multimodal environmental signatures related to transdiagnostic symptom groups that are characterised by shared brain mechanisms. We will uncover the molecular basis underlying these mechanisms using multi-modal -omics analyses, brain organoids and virtual brain simulations, thus providing an integrated perspective for each individual across the lifespan and spectrum of functioning. The insight gained will be applied to developing risk biomarkers and stratification markers. We will then screen for pharmacological compounds targeting the molecular mechanisms discovered. We will also reduce symptom development and progression using virtual reality interventions based on the adverse environmental features - developed in close collaboration with stakeholders. Overall, this project will lead to objective biomarkers and evidence-based pharmacologic and VR-based interventions that will significantly prevent and improve outcomes of environmentally-related mental illnesses, and empower EU citizens to manage better their mental health and well-being.

Immersive online social spaces will soon become ubiquitous. However, there is also a warning that we need to heed from social media. User content is the ‘lifeblood of social media’. However, it often stimulates antisocial interaction and abuse, ultimately posing a danger to vulnerable adults, teenagers, and children. In the VR space this is backed up by the experience of current virtual shared spaces. While they have many positive aspects, they have also become a space full of abuse. Our vision is to develop GuestXR, a socially interactive multisensory platform system that uses eXtended Reality (virtual and augmented reality) as the medium to bring people together for immersive, synchronous face-to-face interaction with positive social outcomes. The critical innovation is the intervention of artificial agents that learn over time to help the virtual social gathering realise its aims. This is an agent that we refer to as “The Guest” that exploits Machine Learning to learn how to facilitate the meeting towards specific outcomes. Underpinning this is neuroscience and social psychology research on group behaviour, which will deliver rules to Agent Based Models (ABM). The combination of AI with immersive systems (including haptics and immersive audio), virtual and augmented reality will be a hugely challenging research task, given the vagaries of social meetings and individual behaviour. Several proof of concept applications will be developed during the project, including a conflict resolution application in collaboration with the UN. A strong User Group made up of a diverse range of stakeholders from industry, academia, government and broader society will provide continuous feedback. An Open Call will be held to bring in artistic support and additional use cases from wider society. Significant work is dedicated to ethics “by design”, to identify problems and look eventually towards an appropriate regulatory framework for such socially interactive systems.

Context According to the WHO, approximately 23% of women and 20% of men are classified as obese. Approximately 69 billion euros is spent on healthcare issues related to dealing with overweight or obese patients in Europe every year. Obesity not only increases the likelihood of many physical illnesses, such as diabetes and coronary artery disease but can also provoke mental health issues such as stress and depression. There is a substantial unmet need to help reduce both the economic and public health burden of obesity. Problem: Current treatments for obesity have limited effectiveness. Treatments for obesity focus on trying to develop a behaviour change in the patients, predominantly trying to change their diet or take more exercise. However, these treatments have shown to be largely ineffective with most patients failing to lose weight in the medium to long term. Telemedicine has been proposed as an alternative to this, with some Virtual Reality solutions beginning to penetrate the market. However, these solutions are essentially the same lifestyle behaviour change treatments in a VR environment. Over time, the patient returns to their previous weight. Solution conVRself is a VR platform that uses embodiment to treat obesity, by allowing the patient to see and interact with themselves. This allows them to target three aspects that are inherent with severe obesity: - Recognition - Self stigmatisation - Self determination conVRself allows patients to tackle the root causes of their obesity, rather than simply treating the symptoms. Project Scope SOCRATES will: - Adapt the conVRself technology for treating obesity in a clinical setting - validate the efficacy of embodiment technology in treating obesity - use conVRself as a proof of concept for using embodiment techniques as a treatment for other behavioural disorders - disseminate the results to promote the use of embodiment technology as an effective healthcare solution for treating behavioural conditions.