810F Fall 2026 From Lab to Life: Virtual Reality to Manage Craving Reactivity & Reduce Substance Use

The instructor’s work expands on the well-researched drug cue-craving paradigm that suggests exposure to drug cues changes the brain and body in ways that increase craving and relapse risk. The research empirically examines if “recovery cues”—or personalized sensory stimuli associated with recovery—hold promise in helping regulate craving reaction to reduce relapse risk. Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments can be used to examine this research question, as VR simulations can build recovery skills before implementing those skills in real-world situations. In doing so, individuals can gain experience with their recovery cues and skill implementation successes during the VR training. Using their own VR-trained skills, they can then use this experience outside the lab to guide real-world behavioral decision-making to prevent substance use relapse. Thus, VR can serve as a learning space to facilitate lab-to-life recovery skills transfer.

Holly Matto, Ph.D., LCSW-C is a professor in the Department of Social Work in the College of Public Health at George Mason University. She has over 20 years of experience in the field of addiction science and has conducted treatment intervention studies with a variety of clinical populations.