Measuring presence during the navigation in a virtual environment using EEG

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2013:191:136-40.

Abstract

In the Virtual Reality field, presence refers to the sense of "being there" in the virtual world. Our aim in this work is to evaluate the usefulness of the Emotiv EPOC EEG device to measure the brain activations due to the sense of presence during the navigation in a Virtual Environment (VE), using for the analysis the sLORETA tool. We compare between two experimental conditions: free and automatic navigation through a VE. In this preliminary step, we monitored 9 healthy subjects, obtaining significant differences between the free and automatic navigation conditions in the activity of the right insula for the Theta and Alpha bands. The insula activation is related to stimulus attention and selfawareness processes, directly related with the sense of presence.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Affect / physiology*
  • Electroencephalography / methods*
  • Equipment Design
  • Equipment Failure Analysis
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Orientation / physiology*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • User-Computer Interface*
  • Visual Perception / physiology*
  • Young Adult