via University of Waterloo
Playing games in virtual reality (VR) could be a key tool in treating people with neurological disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.
The technology, according to a recent study from the University of Waterloo, could help individuals with these neurological conditions shift their perceptions of time, which their conditions lead them to perceive differently.
“The ability to estimate the passage of time with precision is fundamental to our ability to interact with the world,” says co-author Séamas Weech, post-doctoral fellow in Kinesiology. “For some individuals, however, the internal clock is maladjusted, causing timing deficiencies that affect perception and action.
“Studies like ours help us to understand how these deficiencies might be acquired, and how to recalibrate time perception in the brain.”
The UWaterloo study involved 18 females and 13 males with normal vision and no sensory, musculoskeletal or neurological disorders. The researchers used a virtual reality game, Robo Recall, to create a natural setting in which to encourage re-calibration of time perception. The key manipulation of the study was that the researchers coupled the speed and duration of visual events to the participant’s body movements.
The researchers measured participants’ time perception abilities before and after they were exposed to the dynamic VR task. Some participants also completed non-VR time-perception tasks, such as throwing a ball, to use as a control comparison.
The researchers measured the actual and perceived durations of a moving probe in the time perception tasks. They discovered that the virtual reality manipulation was associated with significant reductions in the participants’ estimates of time, by around 15 percent.
“This study adds valuable proof that the perception of time is flexible, and that VR offers a potentially valuable tool for recalibrating time in the brain,” says Weech. “It offers a compelling application for rehabilitation initiatives that focus on how time perception breaks down in certain populations.”
Weech adds, however, that while the effects were strong during the current study, more research is needed to find out how long the effects last, and whether these signals are observable in the brain. “For developing clinical applications, we need to know whether these effects are stable for minutes, days, or weeks afterward. A longitudinal study would provide the answer to this question.”
“Virtual reality technology has matured dramatically,” says Michael Barnett-Cowan, neuroscience professor in the Department of Kinesiology and senior author of the paper. “VR now convincingly changes our experience of space and time, enabling basic research in perception to inform our understanding of how the brains of normal, injured, aged and diseased populations work and how they can be treated to perform optimally.”
Learn more: Virtual reality could recalibrate neurological disorders
The Latest on: Virtual reality
via Google News
The Latest on: Virtual reality
- ‘Squid Game’: Here’s How Fans Can Enter the Contest With Virtual Realityon August 6, 2022 at 6:22 am
Netflix's hit series 'Squid Game' will receive its own virtual reality experience in select states this September. Here's how to play.
- Hugo Boss Is Now Providing a Virtual Reality Try-On Serviceon August 5, 2022 at 8:30 am
German luxury fashion house Hugo Boss just announced a virtual try-on service in partnership with Reactive Reality, a leading 3D digitization technology company. The partnership enables consumers ...
- Exploring sacred sites with virtual realityon August 5, 2022 at 6:17 am
From a tour of the holy city of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque to pilgrimages to the Western Wall and Kaaba at Mecca, worshippers and visitors around the world are able to join virtual reality ...
- FTC's trustbusting turn now (virtual) realityon August 4, 2022 at 8:00 pm
The government alleges that Meta is “already a key player at each level of the virtual reality sector.” Meta is fighting back, saying the agency’s suit is “based on ideology and speculation, not ...
- Orion's Landing is a new hotspot for gamers mixing classics with high-end Virtual Realityon August 4, 2022 at 2:26 pm
Step inside Orion's Landing in Blasdell and memories of being a kid with a pocket full of quarters come rushing back.
- Planetary Debris Disks Discovered with Citizen Scientists and Virtual Realityon August 4, 2022 at 7:19 am
And our vision’s scrutinizing power has been bolstered recently by virtual reality (VR) as well as by thousands of eyes working in tandem thanks to the crowdsourcing power of the Internet. Researchers ...
- Here's the 12-slide presentation that convinced Oak HC/FT and Tiger to bet on a virtual-reality startup to train surgeonson August 4, 2022 at 5:00 am
Osso VR used this presentation to raise $66 million from Oak HC/FT, Tiger Global, and others for its virtual-reality surgical-training platform.
- Indy firm launches virtual-reality-focused effort to fill talent pipelineon August 3, 2022 at 8:52 pm
VisionThree's $80 million effort aims to place virtual-reality career labs in every high school, community college and university in Indiana by 2025.
- A spacesuit, a dream and virtual reality meet at ‘The Infinite’ in Tacomaon August 3, 2022 at 7:00 pm
Ted Huetter dons a space suit to greet attendees of "The Infinite," a virtual reality space experience in Tacoma.
- YC and a16z back virtual reality basketball app Gym Classon August 3, 2022 at 4:00 pm
Despite Zuckerberg & Co. spending billions of dollars on virtual reality tech every fiscal quarter, the wider VR startup ecosystem has been having a tough few years coming down from the highs of 2016, ...
via Bing News