That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-Virtual Reality

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

Virtual reality experiences are becoming increasingly common. How does your brain react to being in a realistic, immersive alternate reality? In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the neuroscience of virtual reality. 

Hi, my name is Olufker Golson and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. Last week on the Byte, we talked about video games and what's going on in your head when you're playing video games and some of the pros and cons of playing video games. This week, I thought I'd follow that up with tackling something similar but different, which is virtual reality. So there's been a massive explosion in terms of virtual reality headsets.

You can get very low-cost ones that work with your phone, or you can get a proper head-mounted display. very low cost ones that work with your phone or you can get a proper head mounted display. And people are, you know, this is becoming a normal part of everyday life. In fact, there's some really cool treatments that are being done in a VR environment. In one call that I was on recently, they're actually talking about putting virtual reality into space for astronauts. And the reason being is then they can simulate them going for a walk outside or things that they might miss when they're on the International Space Station

or perhaps on their way to Mars. But what's going on in your brain when you're experiencing a virtual reality environment? Like, does your brain believe it? Well, the answer is yes and no. You know, VR technology has changed a lot, and now the graphics are quite impressive. But there's enough of a difference that the visual system doesn't truly believe that you're in the environment. And more importantly, there's the other senses.

You know, on an episode in Season 1, we talked about the idea that the parietal cortex is building a body representation of you in space. Well, you can kind of get that in virtual reality, but you're not getting the kind of feedback that you normally get. Like when you go walking outside or anywhere, you know, you're constantly getting feedback from your sensory system that is sort of updating the position of the body in space. And that feedback obviously isn't quite the same in virtual reality. There's also, you know, the other senses, right? Smell, taste, touch, hearing. You know, hearing can be addressed partially, and in fact, you could probably have a quite a good audio track, but smell and touch are just as important. So picking up, you know, a virtual object, you know, you typically you're holding a pair of

controllers, and you're just not getting that somatosensory feedback that makes it real. So your cognitive brain and your conscious brain knows that you're in a virtual environment, so it treats it a little bit differently. But there's been some really cool research that shows that parts of the brain, like the hippocampus, are still encoding spatial location. So while you're working in a virtual world, you actually do build a spatial representation that's very similar to the spatial representations that you use to navigate, you know, everyday life. So parts of your brain are immersed in the environment and treating it as a, you know, a real three-dimensional space. And some of your reflexive systems might fall for cues. Like if

you've ever had the sensation where you're sitting in a car and all of a sudden you think you're rolling backwards, but it's someone beside you going forward. Well, that kind of virtual sensation, that can occur in a virtual environment because the low-level visual system or your subconscious visual system is sensitive to those kind of motion cues and it still gets tricked, if you will. So our brain in virtual environments, well, maybe one day they're going to be able to provide us all five senses, and the graphics will look just like the real world. But for now, your brain kind of believes you're in a virtual environment. So the next time you're playing in a virtual space, know that you're kind of there, but you're not. That's all I've got for this bite today. I hope you enjoyed a little bit about your brain in virtual reality.

Don't forget, our website is up, thatneuroscienceguy.com. It's got links to the blog, the podcast, our YouTube stuff, our merch. Like I said, we're going to put out some new shirts this week, and Patreon, where you can support us. Remember, all the money on Patreon goes to the grad students that help with the podcast, Elle and Matt. So it'd be great if you can help us out and help them pay for graduate school. My name is Olive Craig Olson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. See you on Sunday for another episode of the podcast.