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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Technologies for VR
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2024.1451704
This article is part of the Research Topic Affective Computing in Virtual Reality and its Measurements View all articles

Stop to Smell the Virtual Roses: A Mixed-methods Pilot Study on the Impact of Multisensory Virtual Reality Nature Experiences on Feelings of Relaxation

Provisionally accepted
Marilia Karla Soares Lopes Marilia Karla Soares Lopes 1*Belmir Jose De Jesus Junior Belmir Jose De Jesus Junior 1Olivier Manuel Rosanne Olivier Manuel Rosanne 1Susanna Pardini Susanna Pardini 2Lora Appel Lora Appel 3,4,5Christopher Smith Christopher Smith 4,6Tiago Henrique Falk Tiago Henrique Falk 1
  • 1 Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université du Québec, Quebec City, Canada
  • 2 Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK ), Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Italy
  • 3 University Health Network (UHN), Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 4 Michael Garron Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 5 York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 6 Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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

    This study aimed to investigate the psychological and physiological impacts of audio-visual (AV) and audio-visual-olfactory (AVO) stimuli within an immersive virtual nature environment. Twentytwo nurses from the mental health in-patient ward of a Canadian hospital participated in the study.Each participant chose one of the three available immersive scenarios (beach, lake, waterfall) to experiment with under the AV and AVO conditions. Psychological assessments were conducted via questionnaires to investigate relaxation levels and other measures of user experience.Although the AVO condition demonstrated the greatest improvement in relaxation relative to baseline, no significant differences were observed either between the conditions or across the scenarios. Physiological metrics were collected using an in-house instrumented Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) headset that allowed us to investigate brain activity via electroencephalography (EEG). Results show a significant difference between the two conditions in certain brain regions.Significant differences in neural patterns were also seen for the participants who reported improvements in relaxation, relative to those who did not report any improvements. For these latter-referenced participants, decreased relaxation resulted from the non-congruence of the presented smells with participant expectations. Furthermore, neuromarkers measured from the EEG, such as frontal alpha asymmetry (a measure of approach/withdrawal), engagement score, as well as valence and arousal indices suggested increased relaxation levels in the AVO condition. Our results suggest that multisensory immersive experiences can impact both physiological and psychological outcomes, resulting in increased relaxation levels and enhanced sense engagement for certain scenes. The instrumented VR headset enabled the monitoring of user neural and behavioural patterns, thus allowing for new insights to be gained beyond those achievable with only questionnaires.1 Lopes et al.

    Keywords: virtual reality, nature scenery, Olfaction, Multisensory virtual reality, EEG, Relaxation

    Received: 19 Jun 2024; Accepted: 06 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Soares Lopes, De Jesus Junior, Rosanne, Pardini, Appel, Smith and Falk. 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: Marilia Karla Soares Lopes, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université du Québec, Quebec City, Canada

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