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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Physiol.
Sec. Computational Physiology and Medicine
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fphys.2024.1457371
This article is part of the Research Topic Silicon Revolution in Healthcare View all articles

Performance of game sessions in VR vs standard 2D monitor environment. An EEG study

Provisionally accepted
Urszula Malinowska Urszula Malinowska 1*Jakub Wojciechowski Jakub Wojciechowski 2,3Marek Waligóra Marek Waligóra 2Jacek Rogala Jacek Rogala 1
  • 1 Institute of Experimental Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Masovian, Poland
  • 2 Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warszawa, Poland
  • 3 Bioimaging Research Center, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing (IFPS), Kajetany, Poland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Nowadays studies using Virtual Reality (VR) are gaining high popularity due to VR being a better approximation of the ecological environment for visual experiments than standard 2D display settings. VR technology has been already applied in medicine in the therapy of mental disorders, neurorehabilitation, and neurofeedback. However, its effectiveness compared to the standard 2D procedure is still not fully documented and limited information about the neurophysiological underpinnings of VR is provided. In this study, we tested participants' performance during several sessions of the computer game in two different environments, VR vs. 2D monitor display.Participants performed three 25 min gaming sessions of adapted Delay Match-To-Sample task during EEG recording. The results showed that the VR group outperformed the 2D display group in the first session and then maintained its performance level throughout the remaining two sessions while the 2D group increased performance in each session eventually leveling up in the last one. Also group differences in the EEG activity were most profound only in the first session.In this session, the VR group was characterized by stronger and more synchronized neuronal activity, especially in delta, theta, and gamma bands. The VR group was less impacted by visual arousals as indicated by the theta/beta2 ratio in parietal electrodes.

    Keywords: virtual reality, EEG, DMTS, Cognitive rehabilitation, time-frequency

    Received: 30 Jun 2024; Accepted: 04 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Malinowska, Wojciechowski, Waligóra and Rogala. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Urszula Malinowska, Institute of Experimental Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Masovian, Poland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.