Immersive Virtual Environment Testing Area

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A wide range of services are provided by the Immersive Virtual Environment Testing Area (IVETA) and its staff including, scientific consultation, technological consultation and support, data collection, study administration, data preparation and analysis, and arranging necessary scientific materials. The IVETA also engages in communication and education about virtual reality and related technologies to the research and health care communities, and to the public. During this reporting year, five Social and Behavioral Research Branch-initiated research projects, and one project initiated within the wider NIH have been served by the IVETA team. The IVETA team has also conducted capacity-building research. These include: - Administration of a virtual reality-based test of participant attention in conjunction with a larger study on brain structure and function of children with ADHD (PI: Shaw): Contribution to manuscripts - A study assessing the influence of patient race/ethnicity and socio-economic status on physician decision-making related to personalized medicine (PI: Bonham): Scientific and technological consultation, data collection, data coding and management - A similar clinical personalized medicine study in a nursing context (PIs: Calzone and Brennan): Scientific and technical consultation, planning and procurement - A project studying care giving processes in the context of genetic diseases and conditions (PI: Koehly): Physiological measurement tool consultation, training, technological evaluation, and facility management - A project related to encouraging communication about genetic risk among families (PI: Koehly): virtual reality environment planning and consultation, study design consultation - A study related to the influence of genomic information on child feeding (PI; Persky): Data coding and analysis - A study of an intervention to communicate about gene-environment interaction concepts (PI; Persky): virtual environment design consultation and research We have also played a more minor role in supporting data analysis in several other projects and analyses. In addition to directly serving the research needs of the Social and Behavioral Research Branch and other NIH colleagues, the IVETA team also conducts research and assessments to expand its own capabilities. During this reporting year the IVETA team has undertaken a study to assess the feasibility, utility, and added value of a tool that conducts automated assessment of participant emotion, as well as an assessment and validation of a virtual reality-based tool to study parent feeding behavior. From these evaluations we have published 4 papers in the previous year. We are also undertaking the study of the role of olfaction in VR-based genomics research.