Psychology: Virtual Reality helps with anxiety research

German researchers from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf are using VR glasses to apply a well-known behavioral science experiment to humans for the first time under laboratory conditions.

The so-called “elevated plus maze” is a conventional method to observe the anxiety behavior of mice or rats under different conditions, for example under the influence of drugs or after genetic changes.

Virtual Reality makes the T-Experiment usable for people

So far, this experiment could be implemented only for rodents, primarily for logistical reasons and because of the high effort in the laboratory, but not directly on humans. Behavioral researchers assume that the fear behavior of rodents is more or less transferable to humans.

With the VR glasses, the T-experiment can be applied directly to humans according to a new study. Because in virtual reality, the behavioral scientist can potentially fake the spectacle wearer of any scenario.

anxiety, Psychology: Virtual Reality helps with anxiety research,

Psychology: Virtual Reality helps with anxiety research

Behavioral Research in Virtual Reality: Under b) you can see the VR experimental setup, c). That shows the standard configuration for rodents. Picture: foot et al.

Simple experimental setup in VR

The purely digital experimental set-up significantly reduces the effort required to experiment. So, instead of having to build a physical, man-optimized and thus correspondingly large T-maze. That is a wooden T-piece with a wingspan of 3.5 times 3, 5 meters and a height of 20 cm. The tee can merely be placed on the floor; the test person balances on it with the VR glasses.

Through the lenses, he sees a virtual T-labyrinth with open and protected area, as it is also the case in the experimental setup for animals. A fan that blows headwinds and the wooden cross on the ground physically bring reality and the render images together.

That reinforces the credibility of the simulation and thus the immersion and presence in the virtual world. That, in turn, is necessary for subjects to behave as authentically as they would in a real experimental setup.

Real fears in virtual worlds

If one believes the researchers, then the virtual jugglery works: The anxiety behavior in the first attempt with 100 human subjects resembled that of the rodents.

The subjects had felt in the Virtual Reality anxiety and stress. Their behavior they would have adapted to their sense of dread. Also, the behavioral changes after the addition of remedies that can change the sensation of fear would have affected the ability to move on the T-Cross.

The researchers expect the VR experiment to advance behavioral observation directly to humans under laboratory conditions. So far that was hardly possible. With virtual reality, behavioral science is about to enter a new era, writes project leader Johannes Fuss, saying that the virtual T-experiment is only the beginning. Behavioral researchers may refer to actual human behavior in the future rather than to subjective statements and results from questionnaires.