Virtual Reality Potentiates Emotion and Task Effects of Alpha/Beta Brain Oscillations.

David Schubring,Daniel A Keim,Harald Schupp,Christopher Stolz,Matthias Kraus,Niklas Weiler

doi:10.3390/brainsci10080537

David Schubring, Daniel A Keim + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10080537

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Abstract

The progress of technology has increased research on neuropsychological emotion and attention with virtual reality (VR). However, direct comparisons between conventional two-dimensional (2D) and VR stimulations are lacking. Thus, the present study compared electroencephalography (EEG) correlates of explicit task and implicit emotional attention between 2D and VR stimulation. Participants (n = 16) viewed angry and neutral faces with equal size and distance in both 2D and VR, while they were asked to count one of the two facial expressions. For the main effects of emotion (angry vs. neutral) and task (target vs. nontarget), established event related potentials (ERP), namely the late positive potential (LPP) and the target P300, were replicated. VR stimulation compared to 2D led to overall bigger ERPs but did not interact with emotion or task effects. In the frequency domain, alpha/beta-activity was larger in VR compared to 2D stimulation already in the baseline period. Of note, while alpha/beta event related desynchronization (ERD) for emotion and task conditions were seen in both VR and 2D stimulation, these effects were significantly stronger in VR than in 2D. These results suggest that enhanced immersion with the stimulus materials enabled by VR technology can potentiate induced brain oscillation effects to implicit emotion and explicit task effects.

Highlights

Facial expressions had a significant impact on both arousal and valence (Table 2)
The present study provides three main effects of virtual reality (VR) vs. 2D stimulation: First, both event related potentials (ERP) and frequency effects are modified in VR
While ERP components are overall stronger in VR, frequency results show a different, more engaged baseline prior to stimulation

Summary

Introduction

The advent of better and cheaper virtual reality (VR) consumer hardware stimulated (neuro) psychological attention and emotion research with more immersive VR environments. Both presence, or the feeling of being present in VR, and immersion, or the extent to which a display system can deliver a vivid illusion of VR [1], are strongly correlated with emotion and attention processes (for a review see [2]). The exact relationship between immersion, presence and emotion remains unclear [2,4], which underlines the importance of research on emotion and attention effects in VR

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