Albert “Skip” Rizzo Ph.D. ‘91 presented his research on clinical virtual reality at the annual Stephen A. Lisman Lecture Series in Clinical Psychology on Friday.

Held annually in Binghamton University’s Anderson Center, the Lisman lecture in clinical psychology was established in 2015 to honor Stephen Lisman, a professor who devoted 43 years of service to BU and the field of clinical psychology. The series brings top clinical psychologists every year to enhance training and education through exposing faculty, students and the surrounding community to critical topics in the field.

Rizzo recently to present his findings as the director of the Medical Virtual Reality group at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies and as a research professor at USC’s psychiatry department and Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

He emphasized defining “virtual reality” as human-centric rather than techno-centric, highlighting the interactions between humans and computers. During the lecture, Rizzo discussed how virtual reality and artificial intelligence technologies can be utilized to help treat numerous psychological and physical conditions, from the rehabilitation of brain injury and stroke victims to pain management. Other conditions include post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

“I think the technology is really well-suited for the types of things that we want to do in clinical care,” Rizzo said. “We can build virtual environments that we can put people in that help them to confront their fears, confront their past trauma, can measure their performance in ways that might inform various clinical conditions, like children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.”

Rizzo defined the three “Is” central to virtual reality in clinical psychology — immersion, interactivity and imagination. He said using at least two of these “Is” is essential to establishing a successful clinical VR application. Rizzo described the five core processes that clinical virtual reality can perform — expose, distract, motivate, measure and engage — which can be applied to help treat or address a number of different issues.

Virtual reality was first introduced to clinics in 1994 for exposure therapy, particularly for treating phobias. In exposure therapy, the patient would be shown virtual situations reflecting their fear. It has been used to treat other cases of psychological and physical conditions with such exposure, along with the other core processes.

To conclude the lecture, Rizzo described clinical V.R.’s current applications. He showcased the Virtual Ukraine Project, which his team developed to help Ukrainian combat veterans recover from PTSD and provide social support to refugees and children living in combat areas. Finally, Rizzo highlighted the use of virtual humans — chatbots and human support agents — like the “Battle Buddy,” an A.I. “friend” that can help with suicide prevention and wellness for veterans.

“Right now, one of the primary goals, there’s two of them, but one of them is to do a better job of integrating A.I. into this approach to mental and physical health care,” Rizzo said. “To be able to use A.I. to not only build the content better but to build applications that people can talk to, and they can be understood by an A.I. in the body of a virtual human and perhaps make it so that in the future, everyone will have their own personal coach on their smartphone.”

Many interested in the field of clinical psychology attended this “brief review of the future,” including undergraduate and graduate students, professors and community members.

“My biggest takeaway was to not fear virtual reality and its use in clinical practice,” said Shea Daigler, a junior majoring in psychology. “Because I’ve always heard it could replace [traditional therapy] as a therapy option, and I was scared of that.”

Rizzo said many people hold onto the misconception that V.R. is a fad technology that could never become mainstream or replace interpersonal relationships found in therapy. Instead, he believes that V.R. and A.I. should be used as tools to leverage and enhance interpersonal relationships, improving therapeutic strategies and clinical processes.

While Rizzo said he recognizes the fears surrounding A.I.’s capabilities, we should not just turn a blind eye to it.

“It’s here, I don’t think it’s going to take over the world and I think there’s such a tremendous capability in this technology that it’s going to make our lives much better,” Rizzo said.