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From gaming to surgical training, virtual reality has a wide range of uses.

Now, researchers have developed a virtual reality system to treat men who have committed a domestic violence crime, by placing them in their victim’s shoes.

In the study, researchers from the University of Barcelona showed that violent people have a lack of emotional recognition, but that a virtual experience improves their empathy.

Mavi Sanchez Vives, who coordinated the study, said: “Virtual bodies can be drastically different from the participant’s, but even so, the individual goes under a strong subjective illusion of owning the virtual body.

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“These illusions have an impact on the participant by altering perceptions, attitudes and behaviour.”

The researchers analysed the impact of immersive virtual reality on 20 abusers, as well as 19 control participants.

Participants took a test on emotional recognition to determine whether the experience would change their perception and empathy.

In the session, participants entered a virtual atmosphere, in which their body was replaced by that of a virtual woman.

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They then saw a virtual man enter the scene and display violent behaviour, while slowly moving towards the victim.

Mel Slater, co-author of the study, said: “The atmosphere is interactive, since the abuser looks at the participant’s face and shouts ‘shut up!’ when speaking, or ‘look at me!’ if looking elsewhere.”

Results showed that before going through the virtual reality experience, the offenders’ had a low ability to recognise fear in a woman’s face.

But after experiencing themselves as the victim in the VR session, the ability to recognise that fear improved.

Ms Sanchez Vives added: “In this study we show, for the first time, that changing aggressive people’s perspective with immersive virtual reality, processes like emotion recognition can be modified. And it is thought these lie behind that violence.”