AUTHOR=Yarossi Mathew , Mangalam Madhur , Naufel Stephanie , Tunik Eugene 

TITLE=Virtual Reality as a Context for Adaptation

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Virtual Reality

VOLUME=Volume 2 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/virtual-reality/articles/10.3389/frvir.2021.733076

DOI=10.3389/frvir.2021.733076

ISSN=2673-4192

ABSTRACT=The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated interest in virtual reality (VR) for education, entertainment, telerehabilitation, and skills training. As the frequency and duration of VR engagement increases — the number of people in the United States using VR at least once per month is forecasted to exceed 95 million — it is critical to understand how VR engagement influences brain and behavior. Here, we evaluate neurophysiological effects of sensory conflicts induced by VR engagement and posit an intriguing hypothesis: the brain processes VR as a unique ‘context’ leading to the formation and maintenance of independent sensorimotor representations. We discuss known VR-induced sensorimotor adaptations to illustrate how VR might manifest as a context for learning and how technological and human factors might mediate the context-dependency of sensorimotor representations learned in VR.