Study aims and hypotheses
anxiety
PMR
The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of VRET for the treatment of MPA compared to an active control group receiving Jacobson’s PMR. The study sample comprises professional and semi-professional musicians and music students. The primary outcomes are change of MPA and heart rate variability. In addition, changes in stress parameters such as the cortisol response as well as immunological parameters, neuropeptides and epigenetic markers before and after a musical performance situation in VR will be examined.The study addresses the following main questions: How effective is exposure therapy for MPA assessed by the reduction of subjective anxiety symptoms and objective cardiovascular parameters? We hypothesize that VRET will exert a significant and lasting reduction of subjective MPA symptoms at T1 (post/ approximately one week after the treatment) and at T2 (follow up/ six months after the treatment) compared to T0 (pre/ before the treatment). Also, we expect this reduction of MPA symptoms, at T1 and T2 compared to T0, to be significantly stronger for the experimental group receiving the exposure training compared to the control group receiving PMR. We further hypothesize that the postulated reduction of MPA in the experimental group goes along with a significantly higher HRV representing less cardiac stress during the musical performance situation in VR at T1 and T2 compared to T0. To conclude, the focus is primarily on the effectiveness of VRET compared to PMR.