Health, Medical and Neuropsychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Brain and Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2019 May 16;14(5):e0216988. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216988. eCollection 2019.
Perceptual illusions help us understand deficits in human perception, but they also have the potential to serve as treatment methods; e.g., to alleviate phantom limb pain. Treatment effects are usually the direct result of a mismatch between false visual feedback and somatosensory/proprioceptive feedback. We aimed to influence physical activity (walking distance) using a memory-related perceptual illusion that relies on a mismatch between a spatially manipulated virtual reality environment and a weakness of memory for a similar, previously experienced environment. Participants' main task was to reproduce a baseline distance three times, by walking on a treadmill while moving through a virtual reality environment. Depending on condition, the environment was either stretched or compressed relative to the previous session, but participants were not informed about these manipulations. Because false, suggestive information can lead to alterations in memory, especially when conveyed through 'rich' forms of media such as virtual reality, we expected each manipulation to alter memory for the previous environment(s) and we hypothesized that this would influence walking distance. The results for the first time showed that memory-related perceptual illusions can directly affect physical activity in humans. The effects we found are substantial; stretching previously experienced virtual environments led participants to almost double their initial walking distance, whereas compressing the environments resulted in about half of the initial distance. Possible clinical applications arising from these findings are discussed.
知觉错觉有助于我们理解人类感知的缺陷，但它们也有可能成为治疗方法；例如，减轻幻肢痛。治疗效果通常是虚假视觉反馈与体感/本体感觉反馈之间不匹配的直接结果。我们的目的是使用一种与记忆相关的知觉错觉来影响身体活动（步行距离），这种错觉依赖于对空间操纵的虚拟现实环境和对类似的、之前经历过的环境的记忆弱点之间的不匹配。参与者的主要任务是在跑步机上行走时，通过穿过虚拟现实环境三次复制基线距离。根据条件的不同，环境相对于上一次会话是拉伸或压缩的，但参与者没有被告知这些操作。因为虚假的、暗示性的信息会导致记忆改变，尤其是当通过虚拟现实等“丰富”形式的媒体传达时，我们预计每次操作都会改变对之前环境的记忆，我们假设这会影响步行距离。结果首次表明，与记忆相关的知觉错觉可以直接影响人类的身体活动。我们发现的效果非常显著；拉伸之前经历过的虚拟环境使参与者几乎将他们的初始步行距离增加了一倍，而压缩环境则使距离缩短了大约一半。讨论了这些发现可能产生的临床应用。
