How does our brain respond to Virtual Reality?

Virtual Reality technology has become extremely popular in the final decades and has shown its potential in different fields such as gaming, health and mental health.

Scientific bibliography has merged VR benefits while implementing therapies such as the possibility to reproduce situations that would be difficult or impossible to emulate in real life. Imaging the high value to fright of flight cognitive-behavioral therapies that use gradual exposure as the main technique. It would be unthinkable to purchase flight tickets, become to the airport, and lath the plane every bit many times as needed to overcome this fear. But how does our brain human action while immersed in virtual reality?

Does VR mess with our mind?

Although VR technology has improved a lot since its early days, information technology has some limitations including the gap between virtual environments and real life, which have consequences on your brain activation.

The ideal VR immersion would include – besides the headset – a pair of headphones and the possibility to also stimulate our smell and impact. Notwithstanding almost of the fourth dimension the VR experience only consists of visual stimulation.

Due to this reduction of sensorial stimulation in comparison to real-life experiences, many researchers take demonstrated how VR weakens some brain connections.

Neuroscience experiments with mice have merged interesting results. Enquiry aimed to investigate spatial cells has shown a deactivation of the so-called "head management cell", which tracks the orientation of the head and is responsible for navigation. With no possibility to movement the caput while immersed in VR, these cells can't piece of work equally usual.

Does VR affect our neurons?

But what most encephalon cells? Does VR affect our neurons?

Another investigation on rats has shown that VR reduces by over two-thirds the frequency of spikes – electrical signals through which neurons communicate between them – which ways a high decrease of the data sent. On the other hand, the activity of identify cells – which give information for navigation – is reduced to almost 30% in comparison to place cells' activity in real-world situations that is around eighty%.

And what are the effects on retentiveness? An experiment on rats has shown that 60% of hippocampal neurons, the ones that are linked with memory and learning processes, turned off while exploring a virtual room.

These researches requite usa information on which areas of our brain respond to virtual reality immersion, but they can also go out u.s.a. with a dubiousness: does VR impale brain cells?

The answer is no. The reduction of connections caused by VR is temporal and it but means that brain activation during virtual immersion is weaker than in real life.

Moreover, it is important to remember that these experiments accept been made on mice and that nigh neuroscience research on humans utilize the electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure biometric data and overcome subjective questionnaires, still the compatibility of VR and EEG and the quality of the signal – and consequently of the results – has been barely investigated every bit the publication of Hertweck, S. et al. (2019) highlights.

Farther validation tests of EEG and investigation on VR effects on humans are needed to meliorate empathise how our brain acts while immersed in a virtual world.

In Virtualtimes , we are analyzing and studying the sense and structure of time by generating a flow state with the use of VR gaming. The feel of time can exist distorted due to certain psychopathological weather. Funded by the European Wedlock, this projection aims to provide individuals with opportunities to re-experience and normalize a variant and distorted sense of time.

Other manufactures that might interest yous:

  • Virtual reality in the gaming industry
  • The perception of time during our lives
  • What is VIRTUALTIMES?