The original counterclockwise study carried out in the late 1970s provided an extreme example of "reminiscence therapy," reporting improvements in older adults' cognitive and physical functioning after they had lived for 5 days in a house set up as if decades earlier (the 1950s). We tested a virtual reality (VR) analog of this approach, enhanced by embodying participants in a virtual body that looked like themselves at the corresponding younger age. This study aimed to examine whether brief VR exposures combining (1) embodiment in a virtual body as one's younger self and (2) immersion in an iconic past event improve age-related subjective and performance outcomes compared with a current-self VR control condition. We carried out a between-groups study with 23 healthy older adults (aged 65-85 years; mean age 71.2, SD 4.03 years). Participants were randomly allocated to either a Young Self condition (n=11; mean 72.3, SD 4.17), where they were embodied in a virtual body that looked like themselves from the 1960s, or in a Current Self control condition (n=12; mean 70.1, SD 3.75), where participants were embodied in their current body. There were 5 sessions. In Session 1, participants completed a baseline assessment. There were then 2 VR exposures, approximately 1 week apart (Sessions 2-3), and follow-ups at 1 week (Session 4) and approximately 2 weeks (Session 5) after the final VR exposure. Outcomes included subjective age, awareness of age-related change, World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index, Trail Making Test performance, and physical functioning (eg, grip strength). A hierarchical Bayesian analysis revealed that 1 week after the final VR exposure, those in the Young Self condition demonstrated lower subjective age than those in the Current Self condition (prob=.95). They had higher awareness of positive age-related change (prob=.89) and a higher score on the World Health Organization-Five Well-Being Index. Moreover, with respect to performance variables, they took less time to trace a trail, made fewer mistakes in doing so, had greater right-hand and left-hand grip strength. However, 2 weeks after their final VR exposure, these differences diminished apart from positive awareness of age-related change, trail-making mistakes, and left-hand grip strength. The results demonstrate that even 2 short VR exposures, where people were embodied in their younger body and immersed in an iconic event from more than 50 years earlier, resulted in improvement in some age-related responses. This is encouraging for further research with more extensive VR experiences over a longer time period..

When engaging in physical contact, our emotional response hinges not only on the nuanced sensory details and the receptive properties of the skin but also on contextual cues related to the situation and interpersonal dynamics. The consensus is that the nature of the affective interactive experience in social touch is shaped by a combination of ascending, C-tactile (CT) afferents mediated somatosensory information, and modulatory, top-down information. The question we pose here is whether, in the absence of somatosensory input, multisensory cues alone can suffice to create a genuinely pleasant, authentic, and engaging experience in virtual reality. The study aims to explore how affective touch is perceived in immersive virtual environments, considering varied social norms in neutral settings or settings like a physiotherapy room where the touch provider is a healthcare professional. We conducted an experiment with 58 male and female healthy adults, where we employed a within-group counterbalanced design featuring two factors: (a) visuo-tactile affective touch, and (B) visual-only affective touch. Findings, drawn from questionnaires and collected physiological data, shed light on how contextual factors influence implicit engagement, self-reported embodiment, co-presence, as well as the perceived realism and pleasantness of the touch experience. Our findings, in line with the literature, indicate that to experience the advantages of touch in immersive virtual worlds, it is essential to incorporate haptic feedback, as depending solely on visual input may not be adequate for fully realising the optimal benefits of interpersonal touch. Furthermore, in contradiction with our hypothesis, a less ambiguous context (specifically, the physiotherapy room and touch from a physiotherapist) is not linked to heightened touch pleasantness.

Exposure therapy (ET) for anxiety disorders involves introducing the participant to an anxiety-provoking situation over several treatment sessions. Each time, the participant is exposed to a higher anxiety-provoking stimulus; for example, in the case of fear of heights, the participant would successively experience being at a greater height. ET is effective, and its counterpart, virtual reality (VR) exposure therapy (VRET), where VR substitutes real-world exposure, is equally so. However, ET is time-consuming, requiring several sessions. This study aimed to compare the results of single-session exposure with those of traditional VRET with regard to reducing public speaking anxiety. We introduced a paradigm concerned with public speaking anxiety where the VR exposure occurred in a single session while the participant interacted with a virtual therapist. Over time, the therapist transformed into an entire audience with almost imperceptible changes. We carried out a feasibility study with 45 participants, comparing 3 conditions: single-session exposure (n=16, 36%); conventional multiple-session exposure (n=14, 31%), where the same content was delivered in successive segments over 5 sessions; and a control group (n=15, 33%), who interacted with a single virtual character to talk about everyday matters. A week later, the participants were required to speak on a stage in front of a large audience in VR. Across most of the series of conventional public speaking anxiety measures, the single-session exposure was at least as effective in reducing anxiety as the multiple-session exposure, and both these conditions were better than the control condition. The 12-item Personal Report of Confidence as a Speaker was used to measure public speaking anxiety levels, where higher values indicated more anxiety. Using a Bayesian model, the posterior probabilities of improvement compared to a high baseline were at least 1.7 times greater for single- and multiple-session exposures compared to the control group. The State Perceived Index of Competence was used as a measure of anticipatory anxiety for speaking on a stage in front of a large audience, where lower values indicated higher anxiety. The probabilities of improvement were just over 4 times greater for single- and multiple-session exposures compared to the control group for a low baseline and 489 (single) and 53 (multiple) times greater for a middle baseline. Overall, the results of this feasibility study show that for moderate public speaking anxiety, the paradigm of gradual change in a single session is worth following up with further studies with more severe levels of anxiety and a larger sample size, first with a randomized controlled trial with nonpatients and subsequently, if the outcomes follow those that we have found, with a full clinical trial with patients.

Gesture performance deficits are prevalent in schizophrenia patients and are strongly associated with poor social communication skills and community functioning, affecting their overall quality of life. Currently, video-recording technology is widely used in clinical settings to assess gesture production deficits in schizophrenia patients. Nevertheless, the subjective evaluation of video-recordings can encumber task assessment. The present study will aim to use virtual reality to examine its potential use as an alternative tool to objectively measure gesture performance accuracy in schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Gesture performance in the virtual reality setting will be based on the well-established Test of Upper Limb Apraxia. Participants will be immersed in a virtual environment where they will experience themselves being embodied in a collocated virtual body seen from a first-person perspective. Motion trackers will be placed on participants' hands and elbows to track upper body movements in real-time, and to record gesture movement for later analysis. Participants will see a virtual agent sitting across from them, with a virtual table in between. The agent will perform various types of gestures and the participants' task will be to imitate those gestures as accurately as possible. Measurements from the tracking devices will be stored and analyzed to address gesture performance accuracy across groups. This study aims to provide objective measurements of gesture performance accuracy in schizophrenia patients. If successful, the results will provide new knowledge to the gesture literature and offer the potential for novel therapeutic interventions using virtual reality technologies. Such interventions can improve gesturing and thus advance social communication skills in schizophrenia patients.

When people hold implicit biases against a group they typically engage in discriminatory behaviour against group members. In the context of the implicit racial bias of ‘white’ against 'black' people, it has been shown several times that implicit bias is reduced after a short exposure of embodiment in a dark-skinned body in virtual reality. Embodiment usually leads to the illusion of ownership over the virtual body, irrespective of its skin colour. Previous studies have been carried out in virtual scenarios that are affectively neutral or positive. Here, we show that when the scenario is affectively negative the illusion of body ownership of white participants over a white body is lessened, and implicit bias is higher for white participants in a black virtual body. The study was carried out with 92 white female participants, in a between-groups design with two factors: BodyType (their virtual body was White or Black) and a surrounding Crowd was Negative, Neutral or Positive towards the participant. We argue that negative affect prevents the formation of new positive associations with black and distress leads to disownership of the virtual body. Although virtual reality is often thought of as an ‘empathy machine’ our results suggest caution, that this may not be universally the case.

The brain's body representation is amenable to rapid change, even though we tend to think of our bodies as relatively fixed and stable. For example, it has been shown that a life-sized body perceived in virtual reality as substituting the participant's real body, can be felt as if it were their own, and that the body type can induce perceptual, attitudinal and behavioral changes. Here we show that changes can also occur in cognitive processing and specifically, executive functioning. Young male participants were embodied in either a virtual body that signifies super-intelligence (Einstein) or a (Normal) virtual body of similar age to their own. The Einstein body participants performed better on a cognitive task than the Normal body, considering prior cognitive ability (IQ), with the improvement greatest for those with low self-esteem. Einstein embodiment also reduced implicit bias against older people. Hence virtual body ownership may additionally be used to enhance executive functioning.

The ability to perspective-take (cognitive awareness of another’s state) and empathise (emotional/affective response) are important characteristics for sensitive, co-operative and constructive parenting, which assists in developing adaptive functioning for children. For the first time, immersive virtual reality was used to place parents in the position of a child in order to assess impact on perspective-taking and empathy. This novel study was conducted with non-high risk Spanish mothers. Mothers were virtually embodied as a 4-year-old child, experienced from the first-person perspective and with virtual and real body movements synchronised. They interacted with a ‘mother avatar’, which responded either in a Positive or Negative way. Participants reported a strong body ownership illusion for the child body that led to cognitive, emotional and physical reactions. Experiencing negative maternal behavior increased levels of empathy. In addition, the Negative mother led to increased feelings of fear of violence. Physiological data indicated greater stress in the Negative than Positive condition. Although further research is required to assess the effectiveness of such methods, any improvement in empathy that leads to a change in parenting behavior has the potential to impact on developmental outcomes for children.

When we carry out an act, we typically attribute the action to ourselves, the sense of agency. Explanations for agency include conscious prior intention to act, followed by observation of the sensory consequences; brain activity that involves the feed-forward prediction of the consequences combined with rapid inverse motor prediction to fine-tune the action in real time; priming where there is, e.g., a prior command to perform the act; a cause (the intention to act) preceding the effect (the results of the action); and common-sense rules of attribution of physical causality satisfied. We describe an experiment where participants falsely attributed an act to themselves under conditions that apparently cannot be explained by these theories. A life-sized virtual body seen from the first-person perspective in 3D stereo, as if substituting the real body, was used to induce the illusion of ownership over the virtual body. Half of the 44 experimental participants experienced virtual body movements that were synchronous with their own movements (sync), and the other half asynchronous (async). The virtual body, seen in a mirror, spoke with corresponding lip movements, and for half of the participants this was accompanied by synchronous vibrotactile stimulation on the thyroid cartilage but this was not so for the other half. Participants experiencing sync misattributed the speaking to themselves and also shifted the fundamental frequency of their later utterances toward the stimulus ice. Synchronous vibrotactile stimulation also contributed to these results. We show that these findings can be explained by current theories of agency, provided that the critical role of ownership over the virtual body is taken into account.

Virtual reality can be used to visually substitute a person's body by a life-sized virtual one. Such embodiment results in a perceptual illusion of body ownership over the virtual body. Previous research has shown that the form of the virtual body can influence implicit attitudes. In particular, embodying White people in a Black virtual body is associated with an immediate decrease in their implicit racial bias against Black people. We tested whether the reduction in implicit bias lasts for at least 1 week and whether it is enhanced by multiple exposures. Ninety (90) female participants where the virtual body was either Black or White. Participants were required to follow a virtual Tai Chi teacher who was either Asian or European Caucasian. Each participant had 1, 2, or 3 exposures separated by days. Implicit racial bias was measured 1 week before their first exposure and 1 week after their last. The results show that implicit bias decreased more for those with the Black virtual body than the White. There was also some evidence of a general decrease in bias independently of body type for which possible explanations are put forward.

An illusory sensation of ownership over a surrogate limb or whole body can be induced through specific forms of multisensory stimulation, such as synchronous visuotactile tapping on the hidden real and visible rubber hand in the rubber hand illusion. Such methods have been used to induce ownership over a manikin a virtual body that substitute the real body, as seen from first-person perspective, through a head-mounted display. However, the perceptual and behavioral consequences of such transformed body ownership have hardly been explored. Immersive virtual reality was used to embody 30 adults as a 4-y-old child, and as an adult body scaled to the same height as the child, experienced from the first-person perspective, and with virtual and real body movements synchronized. The result was a strong body-ownership illusion equally for child and scaled-down adult. Moreover there was an overestimation of the sizes of objects compared with a nonembodied baseline, which was significantly greater for the child condition compared with the scaled-down adult condition. An implicit association test showed that being in a child's body resulted in significantly faster reaction times for the classification of self with child-like compared with adult-like attributes. A second experiment with an additional 16 participants extinguished the ownership illusion by using visuomotor asynchrony, with all else equal. The size-estimation and implicit association test differences between child and scaled-down adult were also extinguished, demonstrating perceptual and behavioral correlates of body-ownership illusions that occur as a function of the type of body in which embodiment occurs.

People's mental representations of their own body are malleable and continuously updated through sensory cues. Altering one's body-representation can lead to changes in object perception and implicit attitudes. Virtual reality has been used to embody adults in the body of a 4-year-old child or a scaled-down adult body. Child embodiment was found to cause an overestimation of object sizes, approximately double that during adult embodiment, and identification of the self with child-like attributes. Here we tested the contribution of auditory cues related to one's own voice to these visually-driven effects. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, visual and auditory feedback on one's own body were varied across conditions, which included embodiment in a child or scaled-down adult body, and real (undistorted) or child-like voice feedback. The results replicated, in an older population, previous findings regarding size estimations and implicit attitudes. Further, although auditory cues were not found to enhance these effects, we show that the strength of the embodiment illusion depends on the child-like voice feedback being congruent or incongruent with the age of the virtual body. Results also showed the positive emotional impact of the illusion of owning a child's body, opening up possibilities for health applications.