Over the last 25 years, virtual reality (VR) has offered innovative solutions for targeting different key symptoms of eating disorders: from craving to negative emotions, from attentional biases to body dissatisfaction. The present narrative review assesses the existing literature in these areas trying to identify their different levels of clinical evidence. Specifically, the review presents four clinical approaches based upon VR and their implications in the treatment of eating disorders: VR cue exposure, VR reference frame shifting, VR for correcting body distortions and attentional biases. In general, existing findings demonstrate the clinical value of VR. On one side, the present review suggests that two VR-based techniques—VR exposure and reference frame shifting—have a significant research support and provide a possible advantage over traditional cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. On the other side, two emerging VR applications—multisensory body illusions and the use of VR for the modification of attentional biases—even if supported by preliminary data still need further research.

中文翻译：

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虚拟现实治疗饮食失调

在过去的 25 年里，虚拟现实 (VR) 为针对饮食失调的不同关键症状提供了创新的解决方案：从渴望到消极情绪，从注意力偏差到身体不满意。本叙述性审查评估了这些领域的现有文献，试图确定其不同水平的临床证据。具体而言，该评论介绍了基于 VR 的四种临床方法及其在治疗饮食失调中的意义：VR 提示暴露、VR 参考框架移动、用于纠正身体扭曲和注意力偏差的 VR。总的来说，现有的研究结果证明了 VR 的临床价值。在一边，本综述表明，两种基于 VR 的技术——VR 曝光和参考框架移动——具有重要的研究支持，并为神经性贪食症和暴食症的传统认知行为疗法 (CBT) 提供了可能的优势。另一方面，两个新兴的 VR 应用——多感官身体错觉和使用 VR 来改变注意力偏差——即使得到初步数据的支持，仍需要进一步研究。