Among the flood of recent stories via CNN on autism and related spectrum disorders like Asperger’s syndrome (the debate over vaccines, links to a common sperm donor, the effectiveness of dietary treatment, and various anecdotal stories) was a report on therapeutic efforts within Second Life.

‘Naughty Auties’ battle autism with virtual interaction

When virtual reality (VR) was first demonstrated in the early 90s by early proponents like Jaron Lanier, one of the proposed benefits was for psychological treatment of nervous disorders such as phobias. One of the behavioral treatments for phobias is systemic desensitization, with gradual exposure to the triggering stimulus in a safe environment to re-condition the response. A VR environment can duplicate the phobic stimulus in varying degrees to acclimatize the patient to remaining calm.  A recent study covered in the British Journal of Psychiatry also used VR to observe paranoid spectrum behavior. The use of a VR environment for autism spectrum disorders is a parallel example of systemic sensitization, allowing individuals to practice social interactions and gain confidence in communicating in a protective simulacrum of real life.

Second Life also perhaps represents Lanier’s hope for the future of VR beyond its early roots in static gaming (e.g. BattleTech Centers) and corporate simulations for CAD and oil/gas modeling:

“The main element lacking in video games (compared to what I hope we’ll see in virtual reality) is an expressive power. And so, what I envision is not so much a pre-programmed virtual world that you might play as a game, but rather a virtual world that you can change from the inside; a world that people use as a form of expression, in which they’re creating things together. Just as people make up their own Web pages, they would make up little realities and visit each other’s realities, or co-create them. And I think that level of activity would give rise to really, really wonderful new sorts of human relationships and experiences.”

(Sun interview, The Future of Virtual Reality)