Peterson Steven M, Rios Estefania, Ferris Daniel P
Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Michigan , Ann Arbor, Michigan.
J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida , Gainesville, Florida.
J Neurophysiol. 2018 Oct 1;120(4):1998-2010. doi: 10.1152/jn.00292.2018. Epub 2018 Jul 25.
Immersive virtual reality can expose humans to novel training and sensory environments, but motor training with virtual reality has not been able to improve motor performance as much as motor training in real-world conditions. An advantage of immersive virtual reality that has not been fully leveraged is that it can introduce transient visual perturbations on top of the visual environment being displayed. The goal of this study was to determine whether transient visual perturbations introduced in immersive virtual reality modify electrocortical activity and behavioral outcomes in human subjects practicing a novel balancing task during walking. We studied three groups of healthy young adults (5 male and 5 female for each) while they learned a balance beam walking task for 30 min under different conditions. Two groups trained while wearing a virtual reality headset, and one of those groups also had half-second visual rotation perturbations lasting ~10% of the training time. The third group trained without virtual reality. We recorded high-density electroencephalography (EEG) and movement kinematics. We hypothesized that virtual reality training with perturbations would increase electrocortical activity and improve balance performance compared with virtual reality training without perturbations. Our results confirmed the hypothesis. Brief visual perturbations induced increased theta spectral power and decreased alpha spectral power in parietal and occipital regions and improved balance performance in posttesting. Our findings indicate that transient visual perturbations during immersive virtual reality training can boost short-term motor learning by inducing a cognitive change, minimizing the negative effects of virtual reality on motor training. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We found that transient visual perturbations in virtual reality during balance training can boost short-term motor learning by inducing a cognitive change, overcoming the negative effects of immersive virtual reality. As a result, subjects training in immersive virtual reality with visual perturbations have equivalent performance improvement as training in real-world conditions. Visual perturbations elicited cortical responses in occipital and parietal regions and may have improved the brain's ability to adapt to variations in sensory input.
沉浸式虚拟现实可以让人们接触到新颖的训练和感官环境，但与现实世界条件下的运动训练相比，虚拟现实运动训练并不能同等程度地提高运动表现。沉浸式虚拟现实尚未得到充分利用的一个优势在于，它可以在显示的视觉环境之上引入短暂的视觉干扰。本研究的目的是确定在沉浸式虚拟现实中引入的短暂视觉干扰是否会改变人类受试者在练习步行过程中一项新的平衡任务时的脑电活动和行为结果。我们研究了三组健康的年轻成年人（每组5名男性和5名女性），他们在不同条件下学习平衡木行走任务30分钟。两组在佩戴虚拟现实头戴设备的同时进行训练，其中一组还经历了持续约10%训练时间的半秒视觉旋转干扰。第三组在没有虚拟现实的情况下进行训练。我们记录了高密度脑电图（EEG）和运动运动学数据。我们假设，与无干扰的虚拟现实训练相比，有干扰的虚拟现实训练会增加脑电活动并改善平衡表现。我们的结果证实了这一假设。短暂的视觉干扰在顶叶和枕叶区域诱发了θ频段功率增加和α频段功率降低，并在测试后改善了平衡表现。我们的研究结果表明，沉浸式虚拟现实训练期间的短暂视觉干扰可以通过引发认知变化来促进短期运动学习，将虚拟现实对运动训练的负面影响降至最低。新发现与值得关注之处我们发现，平衡训练期间虚拟现实中的短暂视觉干扰可以通过引发认知变化来促进短期运动学习，克服沉浸式虚拟现实的负面影响。因此，在有视觉干扰的沉浸式虚拟现实中训练的受试者与在现实世界条件下训练的受试者在表现改善方面相当。视觉干扰在枕叶和顶叶区域引发了皮层反应，并可能提高了大脑适应感觉输入变化的能力。
