Recovery

Harnessing VR to prevent substance use relapse

Taylor Thomas — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 17:39:05 +0000

Harnessing VR to prevent substance use relapse Taylor Thomas Sat, 08/16/2025 - 13:39

In This Story

Substance use recovery is a lifelong process, but environmental triggers, such as alcohol at social gatherings or pain medication advertisements, can put individuals in recovery at risk of relapse.

Research by �鶹��Ƶ social work professor Holly Matto, with colleagues from the College of Science and College of Engineering and Computing, and their Brightline Interactive Industry partner, examined how positive stimuli, what they call "recovery cues," can counteract drug cravings and lower relapse risk.

The team equipped individuals in recovery with virtual reality (VR) technology to see how relaxing sensory experiences can regulate their emotional and physical reactions to triggers to ultimately improve behavioral decision-making.

Participants were offered customized recovery cues embedded in a variety of VR scenarios aimed at reducing their bodies’ reactions to drug triggers. Comfort and familiarity were key to recovery cues, Matto emphasized.

“If we can identify an individual’s own set of personally meaningful recovery cues, we have the unique opportunity to present these cues to the individual as a real-time personalized intervention at the time of drug cue exposure and at the onset of craving escalation to help the person stabilize back to a regulated state,” she said.

Recovery cues, such as visualizing a beloved pet or audio messaging with inspirational affirmations, reorient the individual onto the recovery path when faced with something that potentially ignites a drug craving. The most important cue for participants seemed to be the “12-step chip and pamphlet” when presented in the VR scenarios. The “12-steps” refer to the milestones that those overcoming addiction aspire to achieve in their recovery journey. This cue was highly effective, likely due to the recognizability it may elicit in the recovery community.

Developing a “digital best self”

Matto and colleagues are now working on two new research projects, building upon the findings of this study. The team is working on simulations that train individuals to implement their recovery cues so they can control their own reactions to drug cues. The goal is to help them develop a “digital best self” that represents the person they aspire to be in recovery.

“Recovery is a process which requires learning opportunities that create change in the ways an individual engages their thoughts and feelings to motivate behavior in environments that present challenges to their recovery. VR offers an immersive space where that learning can occur and where relapse triggers can be presented in ways that require implementation of learned recovery strategies,” said Matto.

Examining the Power of Recovery Cues to Enhance Real-Time Regulation and Manage Substance Craving was published in Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services in June 2025.

The George �鶹��Ƶ research team includes Professor Padmanabhan Seshaiyer from the College of Science and Associate Professor Nathalia Peixoto from the Volgenau School of Engineering, and Bioengineering PhD candidate Bryce Dunn.

Topics

Substance Use

Recovery

Behavioral Health Recovery

virtual reality

Social Work Research

Social Work Faculty

Artificial Intelligence

Research

Social Work associate professor registers U.S. patent to reduce substance use relapse, the department’s first patent

Mary Cunningham — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 15:20:43 +0000

Social Work associate professor registers U.S. patent to reduce substance use relapse, the department’s first patent Mary Cunningham Wed, 04/26/2023 - 11:20

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Holly Matto, PhD, LCSW-C

Padmanabhan Seshaiyer

Substance use disorder affects more than 46 million Americans according to the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Recovery can be a difficult path, but an interdisciplinary team led by Holly Matto, associate professor in the Department of Social Work, aims to make it a little easier through a recently patented technology-based recovery support system.

Matto and College of Science Professor Padmanabhan Seshaiyer received the patent for a mobile technology to help those in recovery overcome triggers that lead to relapse. The technology is a real-time, cloud-based support system that helps manage behavioral responses—for example, the desire to use opioids—by monitoring physical symptoms, such as changes to a person’s heart rate, to identify when someone needs help to overcome a triggering event. With up to 60 percent of patients experiencing relapse within one year of treatment, the support is critical.

“The patent recognizes our unique contribution to the expanding availability of digital health technologies designed to improve access to timely support,” says Matto. The patent is believed to be the first received by a faculty member from the Department of Social Work.

Known as Recovery Engaged Mind-Health (REMind-h), the technology allows individuals in recovery to identify personally meaningful recovery-affirming sensory cues, which might include positive images, sounds, or other sensory stimuli that reinforce their commitment to recovery. Some examples might include peaceful nature scenes, a soundscape, motivational quote, or a sponsor’s message. These data are stored in the system’s cloud server and are activated and delivered to the person when their physiological metrics rise above the trained threshold, cycling through the available cues until regulation is restored.

“By using technology to monitor physiological responses, people in recovery can immediately have a personalized support system right there on their phone when they need it to help them manage the triggering moment,” says Matto. “The goal is to avoid relapse and, ultimately, to improve their quality of life.”

Matto says the patent has allowed the research team to partner with LifeSpan Digital Health LLC, which will license the technology. The technology prototype has already been developed by Rudra Nagalia, a graduate student in Health Administration and Policy and a member of the research team.

Matto began work on the idea behind the patent several years ago. She and Seshaiyer first teamed up to develop the technology after receiving a multidisciplinary grant from the provost’s office in 2015. They were selected for �鶹��Ƶ’s National Science Foundation Innovation Corps Site Program in 2018, where they conducted interviews and gathered preliminary feedback on the concept.

Since then, Matto and Seshaiyer have also received a National Institutes of Health Small Business Technology Transfer sub-award to further test some of their recovery cue ideas. Bryce Dunn, PhD student in bioengineering, worked with the team on the grant to examine the regulating impact of recovery cues after exposure to substance-related cues in a virtual reality simulation. College of Engineering and Computing faculty member Nathalia Peixoto, a member of this interdisciplinary research team, offered expertise in measuring physiological and neural responses in the VR simulation, to help test the theory that personalized recovery cues help regulate reactivity to drug-stimuli exposures.

Topics

public health research

Research

Introducing the Innovate for Good Series

John Brandon Cantrell — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 13:52:43 +0000

Introducing the Innovate for Good Series John Brandon C… Fri, 02/04/2022 - 08:52

Innovate for Good is a new ongoing series that examines how faculty in the College of Health and Human Services are improving health outcomes using technology such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and personal apps.

Part I: Reducing Caregiver Stress & Improving Recovery Cues

By its very nature, the practice of social work involves people. After all, the definition of social work is, essentially, people helping people. But in an era of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and machine learning, technology is playing an increasingly central role in how people help people.

In �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Health and Human Services, faculty members from the Department of Social Work are embracing technological innovation in its many forms to advance the practice of social work.

“In the field of social work, our goal has always been to figure out how to help those in our communities, whether through practice, organizational leadership, or policymaking,” said Emily S. Ihara, chair of the Department of Social Work. “What’s new is that we’re looking at fresh ways to gather more data to assess how we can best and most efficiently create social change.”

Innovate for Good begins with two ways researchers are using apps and virtual reality to improve the lives and health of those they work with.

Managing and Minimizing Caregiver Stress with a Phone

Caregiver burnout? There’s an app for that.

Funded by a Virginia Center on Aging, Alzheimer’s & Related Diseases Research Award Fund (ARDRAF) grant of $45,000, Ihara and Cathy Tompkins, professor of Social Work, are working with developers Ram Balasubramanian and Atreya Chaganty to help those who provide care for people living with dementia.

They are evaluating use of an app called Zelar developed by health care company Mantrah. This app will be geared toward caregivers with the intent of helping them manage the care of both the dementia patients they help and themselves.

“Care partners are often overwhelmed,” said Ihara. “The idea is that caregivers will enter information about different aspects of the care plan and they will be given reminders and helpful tips to provide organization.”

The app will have several features, including care plan creation, the ability for collaboration with other caregivers, plus self-care plans, a journaling option, and insights that provide feedback to caregivers on their reported performance.

“We’re trying to see if we can use technology to reduce caregiver stress,” said Ihara.

The project, Managing Mental Health Through Technology: Examining the Effects of Collaborative Care Management Technology Application, is being developed with Mantrah.

“In the field of social work, our goal has always been to figure out how to help those in our communities, whether through practice, organizational leadership, or policymaking. What’s new is that we’re looking at fresh ways to gather more data to assess how we can best and most efficiently create social change.”

Emily S. Ihara, Chair of the Department of Social Work

Harnessing the Power of Recovery Cues with Virtual Reality

A multidisciplinary team of researchers, working across four colleges and centers at �鶹��Ƶ, is using technology to develop customized, real-time recovery supports to prevent drug relapse.

The research team is made up of Holly Matto in the Department of Social Work, along with Padmanabhan Seshaiyer in �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Science, Stephanie Carmack in �鶹��Ƶ’s Center for Adaptive Systems of Brain-Body Interactions, Nathalia Peixoto in �鶹��Ƶ’s Volgenau School of Engineering, Siddharth Bhattacharya in �鶹��Ƶ’s School of Business, plus graduate students in engineering Vinicius Zanini and Bryce Dunn and in social work Cate Feldkamp, as well as Rudra Nagalia, a �鶹��Ƶ intern and student at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, in Pilani, India.

The team hypothesizes that they can disrupt the drug trigger-craving-relapse cycle by reorienting people to what is personally rewarding in their lives and regulating the brain and body’s response to drug triggers. These are known as recovery cues.

This idea was inspired by Matto’s work in the field of addiction and from the lived experiences of people in recovery. After treatment, individuals often go back to the same environments that trigger a desire to use drugs, resulting in a need for ongoing, consistent support.

“Because craving can still be quite intense even after months of abstinence, real-time interventions to support recovery are essential to preventing relapse long-term,” said Matto. Examples of recovery cues include music, soundscapes, inspirational quotes, and more.

The �鶹��Ƶ team and its industry partner, Brightline Interactive, are examining the effects of recovery cues using virtual reality simulations. The work is being supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse through a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Grant.

“Rather than focusing on drug triggers, our team believes that by focusing on the rewarding parts of their lives, their recovery cues and supports, individuals in recovery can strengthen and grow,” said Matto.

Virtual reality is unique among other technological enhancements in that it can recreate some elements of the social situations and physical environments that typically trigger relapse, allowing patients to practice skills they will need when they encounter such situations in real life.

Along with investigating recovery cues using virtual reality, the team is developing their Recovery Engaged Mind (REMind-h) app. In this app, individuals in recovery will be able to upload their customized recovery cues according to their preferred sensory modality (visual, auditory, tactile) and content category (people, places, objects), and be able to access these cues when experiencing intense craving.

Innovate for Good is an ongoing series that examines how �鶹��Ƶ faculty in the College of Health and Human Services are harnessing technology to improve health outcomes.

Topics

Healthcare Technology

Addiction

Recovery

In the George